Providence
by pandamo
Summary: After Aang is struck by lightning, his friends are forced to flee Ba Sing Se, and the characters he meets in the Spirit World are interesting, to say the least. The day of Sozin's Comet approaching fast, the Gaang is forced to make some tough decisions—and they'll have to live with the consequences. Season 3 rewrite/AU beginning directly after the Season 2 finale. Kataang.
1. Thunderstruck

**A/N: **This is something that I've been wanting to do for a long time; basically, it's a season 3 rewrite. It begins directly after the season two finale. The only difference is that **Bosco didn't leave Ba Sing Se with the Gaang.** This is important.

The story has been completely planned out.

Disclaimer: I just want to make it clear beforehand that I'm not promoting the idea that I think my plot is better than canon or that the decisions I make are things that I think should have happened. I _love _season three. This is just for fun and because I love AUs. Anyway, enjoy!

**Providence  
Chapter 1: **_**Thunderstruck**_

- —** — **— -

"The Earth Kingdom," Kuei had breathed, "has fallen." His tone had been remarkably solemn and sage-like for an individual Sokka had long before decided was the most air-headed leader he'd ever encountered. Nonetheless, his statement was moving and sent shivers down his spine—neither of which in the good way.

From Appa's back, the Water Tribe warrior looked out to the low, smoldering sunset that slowly roasted the horizon. It was dark—almost night—but it didn't feel like it. The gusts of wind that flapped their clothes against their skins as they cut through the air did nothing to quell the disgusting feeling of heat. Didn't air the sticky sweat that clung to their skin like slime. He closed his eyes and focused on his physical discomforts in a despairing effort to distract himself from the muffled sobs of his sister on Appa's neck, Toph's uncharacteristically pale and frightened expression, the _haunting _smell of Aang's burnt flesh... He was having a hard time giving a damn about the Earth Kingdom at that moment. Something much more important had fallen. He had no idea what happened, but he knew that Aang was close to death. Ghastly close to death.

He shook his head and his eyes opened. Aang might as well have been a corpse, Katara was a mess, Toph's mind was far away, and Kuei was as useful as a royal sack of meat. His inner-child screamed at him to bury his face in his hands and stew in his own melancholy, but he was, seemingly, the only one with the capacity to take charge at the moment. Appa flew in an indiscriminate, unspecified direction, and Aang needed serious medical attention beyond the questionably successful Spirit Water from the North Pole. Goosebumps pricked on his neck at the thought of its failure.

"Katara," he prodded firmly, "Bring Aang back here. I'll switch places with you and try to steer us to a place to land."

His sister looked up from Aang's shoulder and gave him an aggressive, protective glare, her face wet and her nose red. "I'm not moving him," she snipped, her lower lip trembling. Her voice was hoarse.

Sokka pinched the bridge of his nose with his forefingers in frustration. "If we don't land soon, he's going to die," he replied grimly. She stared at him quietly for a moment, hesitant, and he softened slightly. "Come on, Katara. We're all on the same team here."

The smell of Aang's charred skin continued to overpower his nostrils, impervious to the gusts of wind that assaulted them. It hung in the air—an inescapable, torturous cloud of regret. _Was this what it smelled like after Sozin attacked the Air Nomads a century ago?_ He felt sick to his stomach.

She regarded him tentatively and looked back down to Aang, whose labored breathing was clearly audible. As if timed for theatrical effect, he coughed quietly, and her expression softened.

"Okay," she conceded, sniffling and wiping her eye. "You're—you're right. I'm sorry."

Sokka looked to his left, brushing off her apology. Kuei's eyes remained locked on the barely visible city behind them. It was disturbing how calm and unaffected the city—and their environment—looked. _Everything_ depended on the dwindling life of the boy in front of him, and the universe didn't seem to care.

Sokka nudged the man's side with his elbow. "Hey," he said softly. "Kuei." The man looked at him, and Sokka nodded his head in Aang's direction. "Mind helping me move him back into the saddle?"

"Oh—oh, of course. Not at all."

They shuffled awkwardly to receive Aang as Katara rearranged his limp appendages from below. She twisted him around so that his back faced outwards and she gently pushed him up. They slid him from Appa's neck into the saddle, working to keep his figure as straight as possible, but even Katara's extra effort from below did nothing to suppress his pitiful, half-conscious groans. Katara's lower lip trembled, and Sokka failed in his attempt to bite back a cringe.

"It's... It's _King _Kuei, by the way," the man remarked timidly as Sokka shuffled around Katara to steer. He was clearly uncomfortable with the proximity of Aang's dirty, wounded body, but the Water Tribe warrior found it hard to care. In fact, he found a bit of twisted satisfaction in the the man's uneasiness. It was probably the first time the man had felt any emotion of the sort. The teenage boy's subconscious found itself blaming Kuei more and more for their nightmarish situation.

Sokka frowned and raised a brow back at him nonetheless. "King of what?" he asked. "Ba Sing Se doesn't belong to you anymore."

Their positions finally swapped, Sokka took the reins of Appa and began a close inspection of the ground below. Noting that they were flying west, in the direction of the setting sun, he flew low and searched frantically for a secluded area with water and vegetation to land. What little illumination left of the day was quickly dwindling, and it was only common sense, Sokka knew, that the location of that night's camp would be a critical, deciding factor in the ever-tapering chances of Aang's survival.

He continued his search over the next hour, attempting to tune out Katara's fluctuating periods of weeping and rest. Finally, after what seemed like ages, when the sun was only an orange sliver against the dark red sky, he observed a small cave opening up to a humble river that, from the air, appeared a tributary to one much larger. Pine trees surrounded the cave. Enormous mountains pushed against the horizon from the north.

Appa touched down with a knowing, despondent grunt, and Sokka turned around. His passengers seemed to be in an arrangement identical to that of their initial shuffling of positions, and no one but himself, as before, seemed capable of deciding the best course of action. He sighed and took a closer look at their surroundings.

Before the unkempt grotto was a circular clearing that brushed against the tributary he spotted from the sky. The location was marked undetectable by the tall, towering pine trees, and no visible signs of human life were present. "At least something is going right," he muttered grimly under his breath.

"Katara and Toph, make sure Aang gets in that cave safe and sound." They nodded solemnly. "Kuei, go... collect firewood. I'll light it after I'm done unpacking our things."

The former king blanched. "Collect firewood... out _there?_" He looked around. "Aren't there wild animals in the forest?"

"You'll be fine," Sokka deadpanned, hopping off of Appa with a few sleeping bags and other miscellaneous essentials.

"But—but I've never been in the wilderness before. I'd never even left the palace before I met all of you! What if—"

"Seriously," Sokka cut him off with an exasperated sigh, "we have bigger problems to worry about than you being scared of the dark. Appa's probably scared off any animals, and you won't even have to travel that far. You're a big boy."

Reluctantly, the man accepted and stiffly dismounted Appa, starting on his task at an amusingly close proximity to the rest of their party, jumping at any and all unfamiliar sounds, and carrying no more than one stick at a time. He maintained a sour disposition during the entirety of his errand, apparently offended at the thought of having to do physical labor of any kind and seemingly more upset about losing his title of royalty than his kingdom. Sokka made a mental note to speak with him about it later. The man was borderline useless anyway, and it just wouldn't do to throw a negative attitude on top of all that dead weight.

On the other hand, it was, Sokka supposed, rather hypocritical to have any particular qualms with a less-than-cheery mood. His next smile would likely be a long time coming. Besides, the man was probably worried about Bosco. Before they met with a stricken looking Katara, they were forced to separate from the bear, and a concerned glint had been in Kuei's eyes ever since.

By the time he was finished unpacking, Kuei had gleaned a sufficiently large pile of wood, and the girls had used a clever combination of waterbending from the river and earthbending to ensure the smooth transport of Aang's limp body from Appa's back to a makeshift stone table in the middle of the cave. After Katara had wrapped only the bare essentials of bandages around the most dangerous parts of the wound, she made her way to Appa and began the rather arduous chore of removing his saddle. Within a few moments, the others caught the hint, and all but Kuei moved to help her. Together, they heaved the saddle from the bison's back to the interior cave. Toph brought the ground up to fit the saddle's shape so it wouldn't wobble, and they once again moved Aang's body onto leather support..

"Good thinking," Sokka commented. "This should help keep him clean." She nodded.

Sokka moved the fire sufficiently close to where his sister worked to improve Aang's bandages, not concerning himself with being near enough to set the leather saddle accidentally ablaze. It had proven many times over the course of their journey that it was sufficiently flame retardant. Toph bent a small tunnel in the ceiling directly above him to redirect the smoke and he mumbled a thanks.

One by one, all but Katara made their way to the fire and sat while she kept watch over the Avatar. Toph kept both hands on the floor and both eyes needlessly, instinctively wide, ever vigilant for unexpected guests. The flickering red light of the fire clashed with the less frequent bursts of blue light on the wall from Katara's healing hands.

The cave was remarkably convenient for what they needed and a very lucky find. Besides being surrounded by protective (and potentially useful) vegetation beyond the clearing directly outside the cave, the _inside _ of the cave worked to their advantage as well: rather than continuing straight from the entrance, their makeshift, temporary home looped directly to the right, continuing to limit their visibility and protection from ranged attacks. Though Sokka would never admit it, traveling with the Avatar had, for the most part, quelled any doubts regarding the existence of spirits; he wasn't sure if their finding the cave was anything beyond coincidence or the natural, but he didn't particularly care. He was just happy he didn't let his friends down. But it did little to suppress the growing sense of terrible guilt and responsibility for Aang's condition that niggled at the back of his mind.

Eventually, the fluorescent blue glows of Katara's curative hands completely subsided, and she moved to join them by the fire. None of them could tear their eyes away from the flames that licked the glowing white remnants of the logs. The smoky scent reminded him of the stench of Aang's wound.

Aang was, for all intents and purposes, the camelephant in the room. None but Katara actually knew the events that led to his current state, but Sokka knew he was treading on thin ice with Katara. She was an emotional ticking time-bomb, and he wasn't sure if knowing what happened was worth restarting the waterworks that would be inevitably induced by asking her to explain. Eventually, his curiosity overcame his class, but before he could draw a breath to ask his sister, she spoke.

"I guess you guys want to know how all this happened," she asked in monotone. Sokka felt instant relief; her initiation of the discussion had essentially sideswiped any guilt he might have felt by starting it himself.

"Good guess," he replied.

She sighed and pulled her knees up to her chest, her eyes still locked to the fire. "When they threw me in the Crystal Catacombs, Zuko was already there." She observed Sokka raised a brow and continued. "I yelled at him a bit, but he was just... quiet." She scowled. "He sucked me into believing that he'd changed by talking about how he'd lost his mother, too. I almost used the Spirit Water to heal his scar before Aang showed up." She buried her face in her knees.

Sokka's eyes bulged. "_What?_"

She remained silent for several painful moments before pulling her head from her knees and continuing. "Aang and I almost made it to the exit before Azula stopped us. We were fighting her when Zuko came." She hid her face behind her hands. "I actually thought that he was going to help us."

Sokka frowned. "You can't trust anyone from the Fire Nation."

"Jeong Jeong," Katara offered with a brow raised.

"Iroh, too," Toph piped in.

"Okay, two people," Sokka sniffed. "Whatever."

"Anyway," Katara started again with a playful roll of her eyes, "we were actually doing pretty well in the fight before the Dai Li came." Her expression darkened. "There were so many that I don't think Aang saw any choice but to go into the Avatar State. He did it on his own, and everyone stopped and just looked at him—he looked incredible. His eyes and tattoos glowing, he floated up into the air with a huge beam of light," she described with hand motions and a passionate glint in her eyes. It dulled almost immediately and she retreated back to her reserved position. "And then Azula shot him, he fell to the ground, and I got him out." She sighed. "You all know the rest," she mumbled into her hands.

"How did you manage to get out with Aang?" Kuei spoke for the first time.

"I don't remember much, but... I think I kind of went a bit insane." She forced a small laugh. "I buried everyone under a tidal wave and Iroh held them off until I elevated us out."

Sokka whistled, impressed. "Well, Aang owes his life to you, then."

"It doesn't work like that," she sighed. "When Aang got... shot, he was in the Avatar State. You remember what happens when an Avatar dies that way—what he told us after he got attacked by General Fong?" She began to get frantic. "I wish he had told us the rules better—ugh, he was so vague! What if it doesn't have to be immediate? What if you just have to get the _wound_ in the Avatar State before—"

"Katara," Sokka interjected lightly. "Calm down. Aang is going to be fine."

"You don't know that," she spat and pointed a finger at him. "You didn't see him. You didn't see him fall!"

"I could smell him well enough," Sokka mumbled under his breath, looking away. His eyes grew misty.

"I told you all that going back to Ba Sing Se after we got Appa was a bad idea," Toph fumed. She slammed her fist on the ground, and the earth shook. "If Sokka hadn't forced us back, none of this would have happened! What happened to _being on a roll_?"

"Hey, don't look at me," Sokka snipped. "If Kuei had any brains, maybe he would have figured out that he was being played like a little kid!"

"How was I to know?" he quipped in response. "Why wouldn't I trust my advisors? Why wouldn't I believe what I was told about the world?"

"You still could have known!" Sokka almost shouted. He pointed an aggressive finger at the former king. "Did it ever occur to you that you'd never seen a firebender or an airbender? That you'd _never _met a foreign politician?"

"He was too busy relying on Bosco _animal instincts, _remember?" Toph jabbed.

"Don't you dare mock Bosco! He's as smart as any human," Kuei shouted. "You just—you've never spoken to him like I have. He's a remarkable animal."

"Not remarkable enough to replace an armed guard," Sokka growled.

"Bosco is smarter than any of you will ever be! And you all just left him behind!"

Katara let out a muffled sob into her hands and the argument ceased abruptly. They looked at her, and Toph scowled at the fire. "We wouldn't be arguing if Aang was awake," the waterbender whimpered. "I just wish he was here."

"Aang _is _here. He'll get better soon," Sokka whispered.

"No," Toph said solemnly to the fire. Its reflection flickered in her white eyes. "Right now, he might as well be dead."

Katara buried her head in her knees and Sokka glared at the earthbender for several long moments. A few minutes later, Katara pulled a handful of water from her pouch and made her way back over to Aang. The rest found their bedrolls—Sokka lent his to Kuei to avoid any whimpering—and tried desperately to find some sleep.

Only Kuei did. His snores echoed from the cave walls for the rest of the night.

- —** — **— -

"Mind telling me why you're not on this little adventure _alone_?" Toph drawled. "You know, _without me_?"

She and Sokka had been walking due north in the surprisingly humid morning heat for two hours. Their party—namely Katara—had been in desperate need of some supplies. They all needed a change of clothes to stay unrecognizable, Kuei needed a bedroll (_and some common sense_, Toph thought bitterly, _but you can't buy that_), and Katara was very concerned that Aang's wound would be infected, so they needed some bandages and whatever medicine of the sort was available.

The major problem with that was that they had no easy way of purchasing said supplies, and nobody knew the geography well enough to know the nearest town. Sokka, though admittedly distracted by much more grim and important things, had _thought _he saw a town directly north of their landing location, so that's where he and Toph were headed. And Toph was not pleased.

He sighed. "As I've said many times, Toph," he snipped, chopping his hands downward on every other word in an exaggerated gesture, "because none of us should be traveling this far alone. I'm not a bender and you're a master, and as much as I hate to say it, I might need you for protection. We can't afford to have our money stolen _now _of all times." He paused. "And before you ask _again_, we aren't taking Appa because staying undetected is more important now than it's ever been."

The dirt road wound to and fro, up and down, around and over the hills of the forest. It seemed to the Water Tribe warrior that the higher the elevation, the more the foliage. The landscape, definitely beautiful from Appa's saddle, teased him. In a small valley, the hills would block his view, and at the top of an incline, the trees would. None of this helped his mood.

"That's a pretty great story and stuff," she went on from behind him, "So why did you have to drag the blind girl instead of Sugar Queen or His Kingliness?"

He sighed once more. "As I've said many times, Toph," he repeated dramatically, "because nothing in the universe could get Katara out of that cave away from Aang. And I would rather deal with ten of you complaining than be stuck in the forest with Kuei. That man..." he trailed off, shaking his head.

"I bend rocks with more brains than that idiot," Toph agreed.

Sokka shook his head. "I don't even think it's stupidity," he said. "He is just immature in this fantastic and epic way that I've never seen in a grown man. And not the good kind of 'fantastic and epic,' either."

"Complain about the others all you want, but if we spend all this time out here and come back to the cave empty handed," she threatened, "you'll be crapping out rocks for a month."

He stopped suddenly and fixed her with a perplexed expression. Biting back a laugh, she bent a small chair from the ground and took a seat, crossing her legs and waiting. A smirk tainted her lips and her eyebrows were raised expectantly. Several moments passed.

"Oh, I get it." He laughed. "Good one." She punched his arm, and they kept walking.

Behind the banter was an undeniable sense of dread and guilt. Without Kuei present, they lacked a scapegoat upon which to place blame, and neither were the type of person to insult their allies behind their backs—extensively, at least. As a result, they hid their shame behind thin veils of indifference and sarcasm.

An hour of silent walking, however, had pulled the veil away.

"Did you really mean what you said last night? That Aang might as well be dead?" Sokka asked. His stomach dropped merely repeating her words in question.

She puffed her bangs from her eyes. "I really don't know. I was in a bad place last night. We all were." She paused. "What do you think?"

"I don't know either," he sighed. "I was being optimistic for Katara, because she looked like she was going to fall apart. You should'a seen him, Toph. It's bad."

She scoffed. "Sure, I'll just take a look at him when we get back."

"That's not what I meant and you know it," he said with a frown. "I mean..." he trailed off, sighed pensively, and ran a hand through his hair. "While part of me wishes that you could have seen his back, I'm really, _really _glad that you couldn't."

"I know what you mean," she breathed grimly. "I... I could smell him, though."

Sokka looked away. "It was the most disgusting thing I've ever smelled in my life."

She was silent for a few moments before speaking. "In a way, I'm more worried for Katara. If anything—"

"Hey, wait!" Sokka interjected excitedly, "I think that's a village way out there!"

Sure enough, from their vantage point at the top of a hill, the road led straight to a larger clearing cluttered with small houses, colorful flowerbeds, and more importantly, a market. His heart soared. After three hours of walking, though he wouldn't have admitted it to Toph, he was having serious doubts about the existence of the village he supposedly spotted form Appa's neck. Finding the village felt incredibly gratifying.

Toph smashed her foot against the ground and grinned. "So it is. Sweetness."

Though his feet already ached, he couldn't help but pick up the pace. In light of the recent tragedy, it felt good to be productive. It felt good to actively contribute to Aang's health. It was more than Kuei was doing, at the very least.

By the time they reached the village, it became apparent that some sort of festival was taking place. Streamers, extra lanterns, and flags surrounded the crowds that packed the streets. It certainly wasn't anything like one of the parades in Ba Sing Se, but for a seemingly small village, the sheer number of people was impressive. Music from several groups clashed against each other, men and women in the market shouted advertisements for masks, face-paints, and other outfits.

Toph simply seemed annoyed by the sensory overload, and Sokka had conflicting emotions. Part of him desperately wanted to be cheered up by the festive atmosphere, but it also felt _wrong _to be partying while Katara was back in the dank, depressed cave with Aang. The difference in ambiance between the village and the grotto was astounding.

On the bright side, despite the obvious Fire Nation cultural influences, it appeared a predominantly Earth Kingdom establishment, which meant that none of the merchants would have any qualms accepting their Earth Kingdom money. While they didn't have much, they felt confident that they would have enough to purchase most—if not all—of the items on Katara's list. Sokka was suddenly very pleased that his friends kept him from spending the majority of the weekly allowance they were provided in Ba Sing Se.

Over the next two hours, they were able to obtain the items they needed without much issue. An extra bedroll, herbs and bandages for Aang, and, the most difficult to shop for, clothes. Sokka spent the last of their money on lunch, a backpack to carry their loot, and a messenger hawk named "Hawky."

Feet aching, a backpack strapped to his torso and a hawk on his shoulders, they set for the cave.

- —** — **— -


	2. Muddy Catharsis

**Providence  
Chapter 2: **_**Muddy Catharsis**_

- —** — **— -

It was hard to breathe in the cave, though not entirely because the air was thick.

Thick it was, though—stagnant and dank. The cave offered only a single draft of circulation, and it dared not come close to the saddle where Aang slept as if only taking a short nap. It seemed to Katara as though she was being punished for so carelessly allowing the only living airbender to drop like a rock. His plummet insulted him, it seemed... were the the Air Spirits intentionally closing her throat? It was suffocating in the hole—had the boy been helping her breathe all this time, and she'd grown irreversibly accustomed to it?

She watched after Aang, her gaze locked on his slowly breathing form from her cross-legged position beside him, her thoughts alternating between clarity and muddled incomprehensibility...

Quietly, the pitter-patter of the rain outside drifted through the entrance to the cavern. The weather seemed fitting, she thought, but she did find it unfortunate that Toph and her brother had to walk through it on their way home from their shopping trip—assuming they even found the village in question. The weather gave no visible forewarning, but, like waterbenders could, she felt it in her gut and in her pores hours before it arrived. The clouds were angry, but there was no wind—emotionless and empty, just like all who sat in the cave.

She had taken what Sokka had said the night before to heart. _"I could smell him well enough_," he had said, and her inability to admit anything was right overcame her reluctance to admit anything was wrong. So she cleaned the fallen boy up as best she could with the abundance of water from the river nearby—at least without doing him the dishonor of disrobing his undergarments. Months ago she had come close to seeing his privates when approaching a hot spring she thought vacant; it seemed criminal to see the rest of him when he laid in such a state. Anticlimactic. Treacherous.

Short on bandages and herbs as they were, his wound was doing surprisingly well for one only a night old. While it wasn't much to brag of, it had yet to be infected, and she had worked hard to clear the soot and dead flesh away, along with whatever had been causing that haunting smell. She didn't want to know.

Aang's contented sigh and resulting smile—the first he'd worn since gazing up at her on Appa's neck—acted as a grim reminder to move him. Grudgingly, she shifted the bedrolls beneath him and rolled him from his stomach onto his side to keep his joints from stiffening. She tried and failed to ignore his groans of unconscious protest and the guilt that welled from his disappearing pleased expression.

She suspected it was an hour or two before midday, but it was hard to be sure with the sun completely obstructed by the clouds that had seemingly materialized from nothing. Unsurprisingly, Kuei had slept in until only an hour or two before, but she hadn't managed a wink of sleep or a bite to eat. Still, despite the noticeable weight of the bags that hung from her eyes, she had no desire to close them; despite the noticeable filth on her hair and skin, she harbored no desire to wash it away. And she was fairly certain that the emptiness in her gut had nothing to do with hunger.

The former king sat on a rotten log several paces away and alternated between staring at the smoldering leftovers of the previous night's fire and not-so-discreetly staring at her when he thought she wouldn't notice. His eyes only added to the pressure of the air that smothered her, and, much to her surprise, after previously feeling as though she had _no _energy left, she grew antsy. Shifting uncomfortably, she turned her dead gaze from the fallen boy to the sliver of visible trees beyond the angled cave entrance.

"Maybe you should wash up outside," Kuei suggested softly, clearly having picked up on her growing discomfiture, "and get some rest. Sokka and the blind girl will probably be back soon."

"Her name's Toph," she grumbled under her breath, not sparing the man a glance. She sighed, her outward gaze unfaltering, the steady downpour outside looking progressively more appealing. "But maybe you're right."

Giving Aang another thorough inspection, as if something terrible could have befallen him in the few moments of her inattention, she brushed his cheek fondly with her finger and stood, lazily making her way to the clearing outside. She meandered lethargically in the steady downpour through the clearing to the river that swashed against the bare, brown feet that she dropped in. She was suddenly very glad that the impromptu seat she had taken against the riverbank was as grassy as it was, preventing what would have been an embarrassingly muddy oval on the buttocks of her Water Tribe getup.

Being surrounded by so much water did well to clear her thoughts. As the filth from the previous afternoon's battle slowly washed from her skin, powerful emotions—almost as strong as those in the weeks following her mother's murder—surged through her, as if making up for lost time the night before. Tending after Aang's critical state and overcoming the last wave of exhaustion before staying awake the rest of the night had rendered her somewhat of an emotionless zombie, and she had hardly left the cave before her face was scrunched into a despondent scowl and her lip quivered with impending release. The venting was inevitable, and as she choked a sob into the back of her hand, she was glad that it was taking place when and where it was. While the others mostly bottled their emotions the night before, she had resorted to crying, and it left her feeling weak and fragile and _juvenile_. And fragility was not a well applicable trait when caring after a mortally wounded Avatar. A mortally wounded best friend.

Sobbing against the riverbank—her feet in the rushing water, completely surrounded with and drenched in her natural element—seemed appropriate. It felt right in a reality that had gone profoundly wrong.

Then again...

She shifted uneasily and wiped the rainy tears from her cheeks, well aware of the dangers of getting her hopes up. But it was too attractive a concept to resist: Aang's state of health could do nothing but improve, his condition had stabilized favorably since the dreadful night before, and if Toph and Sokka had managed to find the village that was supposedly spotted from the air (she made no claims one way or another, considering that her focus had been a tunnel vision on Aang) then their situation would improve drastically.

Little did Sokka and Toph know how much Aang's life rested in their hands, she mused grimly; regardless of the unrelated other supplies they sought to buy, the extra bandages and herbs she specified would vastly decrease Aang's chances of death—even almost assure his survival. Katara knew little about herbs and little about infection, but even she knew the inevitable consequences of festering on a wound as hateful and malignant as that which tainted Aang's backside. Especially in a dirty cave in the wilderness.

When she thought about the chances or the luck involved in Aang's survival, she thought about how lucky they had been in the past, and she didn't know whether to despair or rejoice. The universe seemed to enjoy throwing them into absolutely absurd situations and allowing them to escape under even more ridiculous circumstance. Perhaps that was what fate had planned for them this time, she thought. As for Sokka's instincts leading to the village... well, her group of friends didn't exactly have the best track record when it came to her brother's instincts.

A few minutes later she sighed and stood, making her way back to the cave as lazily as she had left it. She felt emotionally spent but _unsatisfied_; if asked, she wouldn't have claimed she felt any better than before her outburst on the riverbank. If nothing else, it served to make her limbs heavier and her eyelids droop. It seemed her restless night had caught up with her.

When she finally rounded the turn in the cave entrance and took in the surroundings once more, she wasn't sure why she was surprised that it was exactly the same as she had left it. Aang still laid on his side, dead to the world, Kuei still awkwardly poked the fire with his long stick, Toph and Sokka had still not arrived. Had the situation not been so grim, Appa's huddled-up position in the corner might have been comical. But his image, too, remained as it had been—a depressed bison emotionally destroyed by his master's demise.

Nothing had changed.

As she stared blankly at the scene before her, the concept that that the universe really didn't care about her or her friends cemented in her mind. Her hopes and dreams and emotional outbursts in the rain would change absolutely nothing. Staring at Aang in the dark, wild hours of the night, willing him to wake would do absolutely nothing. The thought was both liberating in the sense that she didn't feel so tied down by the hand of Fate and _terrifying _because they weren't the "good guys" anymore. There were no "good guys." They were a few kids, one of whom with more profound spiritual abilities than the others, fighting a war.

They had just as much chance of being slaughtered as any other enemy to the Fire Nation. And if or when they were killed, few would mourn their death, because most already thought they were dead.

Kuei, oblivious to her mortified existentialist revelation, gave her an evident false smile at her return to the hollow. "I see you've washed up sufficiently," he said in a false brightness that made her cringe. It seemed that sitting alone with a mostly dead body had drained most all of the life from him. Katara found it hard to care, so she didn't; she only nodded in response, but her focus had shifted to Aang.

Soon enough, she was back into her normal routine—incessant hovering over a gradual situation that didn't need hovering, a decided, purposeful disregard of the former king a few paces away, and constant glances at the entrance in the hopes of her brother and Toph's return. A glimpse at Aang's wound was all it took for her severe exhaustion to be forgotten entirely and for her mood, only slightly improved by her pathetic excursion to the riverbank, to take an intense decline.

"So," Kuei began curiously, an eyebrow raised, "what'll you be preparing for my lunch?"

Katara looked at him curiously. She wasn't entirely against the idea of making lunch—it would make for a nice distraction—but he seemed awfully presumptuous about it. She shrugged and bent a small orb of water from her satchel to drink.

"You know, my servants at the palace were always right on time. Far be it from me to criticize your waitressing skills, but I think you'd do a lot better if you weren't so pitifully late."

Katara coughed out a portion the mouthful of water she'd just gulped and sputtered for a few moments before eyeing the man incredulously.

Kuei smiled and continued innocently. "I only had a brunch yesterday, and I am quite famished."

He shifted uneasily at the way Katara intently dissected his facial expression. "You're... you're _serious,_" she muttered in disbelief. "You aren't kidding, are you?"

Kuei twiddled his thumbs and laughed nervously, not having expected her reaction and becoming increasingly terrified by the deranged glint in her eye. "Of course not." He patted his gut. "I'd not dare joke about matters of the stomach."

For a few seconds, Kuei almost thought that his waterbender acquaintance would simply laugh and get to work preparing his meal. That all became a distant dream, however, when a water whip materialized from the cave entrance and lashed his rear with a loud _snap._

Kuei yelped and jumped upright, rubbing his behind with an angry expression and eyeing it to check for any serious injury. Fortunately for him, his backside was intact, but that didn't stop him from shifting the target of his annoyed glower from the sore body part in question to the incriminating waterbender. His expression took on a bit of fear after catching sight of the absolutely _furious _expression on Katara, but his frustration was resolute.

"What'd you do that for?!" he cried. "All I did was ask what's for—" _snap!_ "—Oi! You stop that right now, young lady!"

Katara's fists tightened. "Toph and Sokka are alone in the woods looking for a place to buy a sleeping bag for _you_," she shouted, lashing his behind with another _snap_—"Ouch!"—"after I stayed up all night to keep the Avatar alive because he got struck by lightning in _your _stupid, defenseless city run by a... a man child and his worthless pet bear!"

Kuei stood straighter, an indignant expression that was only a poor, transparent cover-up to his hurt feelings and fright. "Don't you dare talk about Bosco that way," he snipped. "He is—" _snap! _"Ow! Will you quit it?"

"Oh, enough about your stupid bear," Katara hissed. "After all that, you have the _audacity _to... to... just get out!" _Snap! _"Out with you!"

He yelped and scurried towards the exit as her water whip followed fiercely from behind. "Wait!" he cried in capitulation, his arms up in surrender until the whip made for his groin and he covered the area with his hands pitifully. "Where will I go? I'm no traveler—just look at me!"

"Get out!" she growled with another admittedly soft whip. While she was, for the most part, legitimately angry, a small portion of her was very amused to see such an exaggerated reaction to extremely soft attacks. Aang, a twelve year old boy, had taken much worse in his waterbending training and had hardly flinched.

"Fine!" Kuei bellowed with a melodramatic wave of his arms. "I don't need you or your friends. I'll go back to Ba Sing Se and save Bosco myself. Have fun in your cave!"

And with that, he turned and stomped through the rain. She stood and watched his departure until he was completely invisible behind the weather before turning, still slightly trembling with outrage, walking back to the side of the saddle, and laying against it with an exhausted drop to the ground.

Perhaps in a few hours she would severely regret her angry outburst, but, emotionally spent and without a night's rest, sleep seemed a much more attractive prospect.

- —** — **— -

"Remember that one time when you said you could carry your own weight?" Sokka whined. "I'd like to cash in on that offer now, please."

Toph smirked from beside him but did her best to put on a miserable expression. "I'd help, water boy... if only I could," she intoned with a false wistfulness, "I'm just a poor, helpless blind girl in the mud." She stomped her foot against the ground, and a sizable, dry disc surfaced from the earth and hovered above her, easily blocking the rain.

"Yeah," Sokka deadpanned, "you look like you're having a terrible time."

She sniffed. "I'd agree with you," she whimpered with faux dejection, "but I can't see myself. If only my eyes worked, I could see your big arms carrying that pack for us..."

He hummed dismissively.

Besides the sudden dreary weather and Sokka being manipulated into carrying the entirety of the day's shopping loot, the trip back to the cave had been relatively uneventful. Had they not mostly traveled on a well-worn road on their way to the village, Sokka would have been worried that the light shower would have dissolved their footprints into the mud, effectively preventing any chance they might have had at finding their way back. Instead, the Water Tribe warrior's only concern at that point was the several thousand pace trip from the road back to Aang and the slight worry that niggled the back of his mind that something could have happened to his sister in his absence.

Most of his thoughts, however, were smothered by the overarching fear that the day's efforts would fail to fix Aang's wound or, even worse, that during his lengthy excursion with Toph, the boy had already fallen ill.

Rather than dwell on the thoughts that would leave him in as dark a place as he was that morning, he decided to instead focus on the road for the small landmark that designated the right place to fork from the road.

"Here," Toph said, moving behind him and foraging around in his pack until she found a mango, "that should take some of the load off, big guy." Moving back beside him, the disc of stone still blocking the rain, she bit into the piece of fruit with an exaggerated groan of pleasure. "This is just _delicious._"

He sighed. With Toph's boredom and good mood, which had been vastly improved by the festival's atmosphere, came the inevitable decline of his own. Perhaps focusing on the road would be difficult.

The rain did little to quell the striking beauty of the natural landscape. So far on their journeys, Sokka had come to harbor a distaste for every sovereignty in the world except his own—the Earth Kingdom, for its ignorant, capricious leaders; the Fire Nation for its incredible conceit and blatant disregard for the well being of other peoples; the Northern Water Tribe, for its degradation of women and arranged marriages. Traveling with Kuei for just a day had only served to reinforce his disdain for the Earth Kingdom, but he would be a fool to deny its beauty. Rolling hills pushed against the budding rainbows, red clouds painted by the setting sun, and ancient oak-willows that had undeniably been in existence for an indefinite string of generations. Like all wilderness, the Earth Kingdom had both good and bad—the Si Wong Desert being a prime example of the bad—but the picturesque countryside to the west of Ba Sing Se was undeniably gorgeous. He couldn't decide if it was mocking his grim situation with its liveliness or if it was trying to cheer him up.

Although the rain was only relatively light, the road itself was muddy as though there were heavy showers; he had long before taken off his blue dyed, cloth and leather footwear out of a lazy attempt to avoid Katara yelling at him to wash them, but it meant he had to meticulously watch his step for fear of impaling his foot with something sharp. As the sound of his feet and the rain hitting the mud below him met his ears and the wet, _earthy _smell of the rain hit his nose, he decided that the weather was actually quite nice. Despite his heritage, he only carried a slight affinity for water, but the light showers were admittedly pleasant. They calmed his nerves—unlike the girl next to him that seemed to be sliding through the mud as if on ice. He watched her wiggle her toes pleasurably through the brown slop as she meandered on and couldn't help but let an amused smile taint his lips.

"Do you have any idea where that weird rock is," he began in an attempt to distract her before she bothered him again, "that we pointed out to mark the road? I don't want to get lost."

She shrugged complacently. "Up ahead a ways. We aren't too far."

Sokka sagged with relief. Excited as he had been to leave the cave that morning, he was excited to be back. He opened his mouth to respond when Toph slowed and raised a brow.

"There's a man stomping towards us on the road ahead. He seems... pissed."

Sokka froze, cautiously unsheathing his boomerang from its makeshift scabbard on his belt. He narrowed his eyes, barely making out the figure trudging through the fog, when Toph visibly relaxed and let out a snort of amusement.

"It's Kuei," she chirped, pleasantly surprised. "What's this idiot doing slogging through the mud like he's looking for a fight?"

Sokka frowned in confusion. Sure enough, as the figure grew closer, his green, aristocratic robes could be seen, the sleeves wet and sagging from his arms, the leggings coated in mud and clinging to his legs like a wet blanket. His face was scrunched up into an aggravated scowl, but as he became clearer, a glint of uneasiness could be seen in his eyes. Sokka raised a brow.

Kuei stopped a few paces away from him and pointed an angry finger at his chest. "Your sister is _crazy_! Good luck dealing with her—I'm going back to Ba Sing Se on my own!" he snapped as he moved around them and continued on his way. "And I'm going to rescue Bosco while I'm at it!" he shouted from behind them.

"Have..." Sokka murmured, flabbergasted. "Have fun with that."

Toph waited a few moments before speaking. "I hope you realize you're walking north," she pointed out loudly to the man, her smug grin widening when the former king stopped in his tracks.

He turned. "What... really?"

Sokka laughed. "Spirits, you're right. Good luck getting to Ba Sing Se going north!"

Kuei blanched before turning a beety shade of red.. "Oh—ahm, which... er, which way is Ba Sing Se?"

Toph let out a snort and Sokka sighed, pointing to the east. It was directly through the woodlands. The idea of a man-child who didn't know the first thing about navigating—and probably thought that all bears were as friendly as Bosco—traveling through the rainy woods on his own became increasingly less funny. Nonetheless, he remained silent as Kuei nodded stiffly and changed his course appropriately.

Toph kept on walking as though nothing had happened, and it took Sokka a few moments for his brain to register what had actually just occurred before he scurried up to catch up with her. "We should probably go back and get him," he suggested grudgingly before they'd walked a dozen paces.

She scoffed. "You want to take _longer _to get that medicine and those bandages back to Aang," she asked incredulously, "to go rescue the guy who helped in landing him with that lightning bolt in his back?" She scowled. "Makes sense."

"Come on, Toph," he insisted with a pitiful expression on his face. He gestured behind himself. "The guy is helpless. Who knows if he'll even make it to Ba Sing Se alive, and then what? How the heck is he supposed to get Bosco back and not get impaled by Fire Nation pointy sticks?"

She waved him off dismissively and only increased her pace. "Do what you want. I'm not going to save that idiot from himself."

He reluctantly yielded his argument and the two continued along the road. Sokka could see the landmark rock in the distance.

"And who knows," Toph commented absently, "maybe he'll get some damned common sense along the way."

- —** — **— -


	3. Road to Nowhere

**Providence  
Chapter 3: **_**Road to Nowhere**_

- —** — **— -

Aang woke without any doubt that he was in the Spirit World.

It wasn't as if he particularly _felt_ any different—indeed, the Spirit World had the rather disconcerting property of feeling just as real and alive as the Physical one—but it wasn't all that difficult to discern his location. The few purple or blue trees mixed with the greens hanging over him and obstructing his supine view of the sky, the strange wind that seemed to pass straight through him, the cacophony of bird calls the likes of which he'd never heard... But beyond the sensual clues was an aura of otherworldliness that manifested itself in a deep, inescapable feeling of uneasiness. It was all alive. _Too_ alive.

But he could get over it. The first time he'd entered the Spirit World completely, during the Fire Nation siege of the Northern Water Tribe, on top of his pervading uncertainty was the incredible stress of finding the answers he needed to defeat an entire fleet of battleships. Now, however, he felt no such stress. In fact, he couldn't remember _anything _except his identity, his last visit to the Spirit World, and his friends—his surrogate family that he began to miss progressively more for each second he sat in the thick, supernatural woodland. But despite the longing and uneasiness, the inability to recall any of his responsibilities filled him with a warm, tingly, _satisfied _sensation. It was almost enough to counteract the unsettling sense that he was being watched. Scrutinized.

Aang sat up, blinked, and regarded his surroundings. A variety of trees surrounded his circular clearing of uncomfortable overgrowth and stone and stretched on as far as the eye could see. Thick blades of grass poked at his rear, and vines of all colors crawled over the ground and trees. Overall, it was a very bright and lively setting, and though nothing compared to the swamps he experienced during his times at the North Pole or western Earth Kingdom, life was everywhere. Countless lightning bugs flashed their ephemeral, blue glow around him. Salient against the already colorful background, they even further spiritualized his surroundings.

The air was crisp and carried the faint scent of cedar-willow.

He sat up, traced an arrow on his arm with his hand and suddenly felt very alone in the sea of life that surrounded him. The satisfaction of being completely without responsibility—something he certainly felt before but didn't know the reasoning behind—trickled from his bones like water from a sea sponge, replaced with an empty, hollow dejection. His mind was blank, only absorbing the ambiance and vaguely wondering when the gravity of being stuck in the Spirit World alone and without memories would hit him. It didn't.

Instead, he smiled brightly at the realization that he had his past reincarnations to call on for help. Desperate for some kind of information—_anything_ that would give him some sort of direction—he pulled his legs around and folded his hands together, arranging his body into the Lotus Position. He closed his eyes, exhaled, and meditated on Roku in an attempt to summon him.

_Roku, _he pleaded. _I need to speak with you._

But he felt no response. The more he focused on his call for help, the more disconnected he felt with the past Avatars. Eventually, the choral hymn of his past lives that he learned to tune out as a child became deafeningly silent, and he felt an acute emptiness in his chest. He'd never felt it before, but somehow he knew exactly what it meant: he no longer carried the Avatar Spirit. A wave of mortification trickled through him.

"Why are you here?" he heard a sweet, tiny, feminine voice ask from behind him. "Why are you in our forest?"

He turned to face his newfound company, one palm against the ground supporting his leaning figure, the other continuing to rub his eye. Expecting a coy little girl, he was shocked—and profoundly disturbed—to see that the source of the sweet voice was a cat.

Its purple fur was quite short, like that of a rodent, and sizable black wings, bare and structured like that of a bat, rested behind its shoulders, folded. Its eyes were a none too friendly bright yellow with menacing vertical slits in their centers. It sat directly on the water, like one would on stone, uptight and straight. A striped, fluffy tail wrapped around its front paws.

"I didn't mean to be," Aang answered sheepishly, his voice hoarse. "I just woke up."

The cat made an amused grunt, suddenly with the deep voice of a large man, and began licking its paws. "You seem to possess an affinity for waking up in strange places," it observed. "And this time, it appears you're without a pretty girl to ride penguins with."

Aang couldn't help but laugh lightly, glad that his troubles could be forgotten—if only for a moment. "I didn't expect a spirit would actually admit how weird this place is," he quipped.

The purple feline let a smirk through his icy exterior. "We have a certain standard for eccentricity. And our worlds are closer than you might think, Avatar. You humans have come to rely rather heavily on this realm recently," he said. "We can't complain. It is nice to feel needed."

"I know the feeling," Aang mumbled. "Do you know why I'm here? I can't remember a thing."

"If you recall, we asked just that only moments ago."

Aang winced sheepishly, choosing to keep his observations on the cat's supposed plurality silent. "Oh, right."

"Then again," the cat mused aloud, "perhaps we were more interested in your answer than the truth. A conversation with a befuddled Avatar is much more interesting than the monotony of a perpetual woodland, beautiful as it may be." The cat sighed. "Some call it harmony. We call it boring." And with that, he stretched his wings—wings somehow even more terrifying when fully extended—and took flight into the trees. "We'll be watching!" he shot back from the distance.

Aang shook his head and scratched his cheek, perplexed. "Well, that was worthless."

Was there even a point to that conversation?

Decidedly resolute that his quest for knowledge would likely be much more successful if he actually traveled somewhere, he forced his wobbly legs to stand and grimaced at the flash of pain that sprung from his back. He froze, curious but wary of inducing more pain by attempting to discover its source, and waited for the sting to subside. Eventually, it did—but only into a deep, hollow ache that danced in his core to the beat of his heart.

His mind still lingering around the strange conversation he'd shared with the winged cat, he started in an unspecified direction. The forest was still moderately bright under the shade of the trees, so he assumed it was midday; nonetheless, he couldn't find a trace of the sun's glare in the vast expanse of leaves and sky above him, and no shadows hung from the leaves and branches. It appeared the Spirit World was without a superior celestial layer—it was the ultimate realm of the supernatural. The idea both awed him and terrified him. Either way, it made navigation rather difficult.

Not that he was an experienced navigator to begin with. After most Air Nomad neophytes earned mastery and their tattoos, they moved on to more practical lessons such as adventuring and wilderness survival. Instead, as a budding Avatar, Aang received only more academic training and political studies. While he was sure that would likely come in handy at some distant, far away point in his life, it didn't do him much good wandering through a forest—or a supernatural one at that.

And so he moved. His pace was casual and his focus was more introspective than on his surroundings, something he was aware of but failed to prevent. Few mortals such as himself ever had the opportunity to wander the Spirit World or see life as beautiful as that which surrounded him, but even still his mind brooded on the seemingly worthless conversation with the cat and, more importantly, his recent detachment with the Avatar Spirit.

The idea of losing the power didn't terrify him, rather the loss of what had finally started merging into his self image. For so many months (and unconsciously for a century) he had seen himself and the Avatar as two separate entities. But the Avatar was an important ingredient in the main course, not, as he had finally begun to realize, an side dish. To have that ripped away so cruelly and without any reason made his stomach twist with anxiety at the potential anguish he might have to face if the disconnect became permanent.

So, as was in his nature, he avoided the terrifying possibility that he would no longer be the Avatar by lifting his gaze from his moving legs to focus on his surroundings instead. And when he did, his gaze met directly with that of a goofily grinning boy only three paces in front of him.

Aang yelped and jumped in a reflexive attempt to airbend himself into the trees. Instead, he merely hopped backwards and landed on his rear in a puddle of mud. Shaking his head and blinking several times, he looked back to the source of his panic.

"Well hello, _Meester Aveytar,_" the other boy said.

Aang blinked. "Um... Hi?"

The boy's already sizable smile grew even larger in response. His hair was brown and ruffled as though he'd just gotten out of bed, and his eyes were large and purple. No shirt hung from his torso—though he had the decency to wear a pair of burlap trousers that were cut at the knee—and he wasn't particularly stocky or muscled. Rather, his frame was toned and skinny: about what one would expect of a teenager his age who didn't partake of much physical activity. Though far from the complexion of Sokka and Katara's skin, he was impressively tan.

Aang didn't know many spirits, but despite his harmless encounter with the winged cat earlier, he got the impression that most of them were capable of much more than they initially let on, leaving him wary of interacting too much with a being that, like the creatures that plagued his nightmares after facing Koh, could potentially morph into something horrific and rip him limb from limb.

But it was hard to be frightened by the individual before him. His grin was disarmingly endearing, and his eyes were a unique shade of amethyst, matching exactly the hue of the leaves on several of the trees.

Judging by the unwavering expression on Trinket's face and the lengthening silence between them, Aang supposed he should speak first.

"I'm Avatar Aang," he said, rubbing his neck sheepishly. "But I guess you already got the Avatar part..." _Oh, and the Avatar Spirit just got ripped out of me a few minutes ago, and I have no idea why._ "What's your name?"

"Trinket," he said enthusiastically. "I don't have a real name, but my parents nicknamed me Trinket when I was born."

Aang hummed in response, his mind completely blank of a more appropriate reaction.

"I haven't met someone my age in a thousand years!" Trinket exclaimed as he sat down, crossed his legs, and rested his cheeks in his palms with his elbows resting on his knees. A brilliant, engaged smile covered his face, and his brows were raised excitedly. "So how's it hanging?"

_Terribly. And I'm generally a pretty happy guy, but you're enthusiasm is making me uncomfortable. _"Pretty well," Aang lied. He hoped the grimace didn't give it away too much. "I'm a bit confused, though," he admitted sheepishly, standing and brushing the mud off of his behind. It was swept away cleanly and no trace of the slime was left in his clothes. "Do you know why I'm here? I can't remember anything."

"Nope," Trinket replied brightly with a terrible crack of his voice. Aang had spent enough time with Sokka to be sufficiently practiced at masking a reactionary cringe, and he winced internally as he remembered that his own voice would be cracking soon—granted he ever made it out of the Spirit World. He wondered if Katara would laugh at him or with him. He wondered how much time would pass in the Physical World before his return.

He didn't want to think about it.

He didn't want to think about _anything_—he knew he was on an adventure with his best friends and potentially unrequited love interest, but to what end or for how long he hadn't a clue. The complete lack of information— the huge blind spot in his mind—rendered him unable to ruminate on anything but the disaster he was stuck in: a progressively horrific, pseudo-peaceful forest that he could potentially be spending eternity in. All without bending and all without Katara. There was a chance that he would never experience the favorite aspects of his life again.

Trinket, however, appeared blissfully unaware of Aang's plight. The same smile that carried the impossible innocence only a spirit could possess now had a dreamy quality, as if the boy had spaced out entirely. Whatever world the other boy's thoughts rested in, it seemed a paradise to the purple and blue forest that did nothing but make Aang's stomach churn.

"Why are you smiling at me like that?" Aang finally asked.

Trinket blinked. "Oh," he blurted, his mind returning. "I was smiling?"

Aang coughed and looked away, his cheeks rosy in memory. "Yeah."

The other boy wriggled his nose. "In that case..." he started, standing up in a huff and moving uncomfortably close to Aang, "Let's talk. Tell me about yourself, buddy ol' pal."

Aang, once again starting to feel suffocated by his environment, started walking again, torn between the hope that the other boy would both follow and stay behind. Sure enough, Trinket remained on his tail, listening intently. "Well," he said, "I was born on a small island off the coast of Whale Tail Island, but when I was two, they took me to the Western Air Temple for the Avatar Test. When they found out I was the one, they took me to the Southern..." he paused and looked back at his new acquaintance. "You don't know what I'm talking about, do you?"

Trinket smiled excitedly. "Not at all."

Aang sighed. "Right, well, uh... know anything about bending?"

"Zilch. Anything juicy I should know about you?" he asked, effortlessly brushing off Aang's question. He stepped forward expectantly. "Are you _saucy?_"

Aang blinked. As it turned out, it was quite a challenge to explain himself to a stranger who knew nothing of the context of his history and nothing of bending. He was sure there was something else interesting about himself; Katara had taken an immediate and fervent interest in him after they met. Then again, he was the first airbender she'd ever seen—perhaps even the only other bender she'd met, the rest being either blocked or taken by the Fire Nation.

_Oh, right. The Fire Nation waged war on the world. That probably has something to do with why I'm here._

Yes, he was definitely the first bender besides herself that she'd met. But he had been more than a novelty to her, he knew. Katara had enjoyed his company much before she learned of his connection to the past Avatars. As for her fascination only being with his bending... surely he was more than a relic—a forgotten, interesting anomaly. There was more to Aang than bending.

Right?

Yes, of course there was.

"Well," Aang started unsurely, "I was frozen in an iceberg for a hundred years. I'm a hundred and twelve."

Trinket gasped. "A _hundred _and twelve? I could have sworn you looked _much _older than that."

"Uh—"

"Goodness," Trinket croaked with a sharp crack of his voice. "You're like a kid, aren't you?"

"For... um, _mortals, _I'm a lot older than most all of them. I only know a few people as old as me," Aang replied, turning around and picking up his pace again.

"Wowza." Trinket moved and strode to the left of him, poking Aang's nose. "You're too cute for an old guy," he said.

Aang tripped over a root and went flying into yet another puddle of mud. He stood and again wiped himself off, uncertain if his face was flushed scarlet from the tumble or the compliment. "Maybe we should talk about something else," he squeaked.

"Sure," Trinket chirped. "So how'd you end up running into me?"

Aang ducked his head, embarrassed by the mention of his earlier fall so soon after his face was planted in the mud. "Well, I just woke up in a clearing, some... weird stuff happened, I talked to a cat with wings, and then you scared me and I fell into the mud."

Trinket tapped his chin. "Hm... are you talking about Useless Owl?"

Aang blinked. "I—I don't think so. He was a cat. With wings."

Trinket nodded. "Yes. That does sound like Mister Useless Owl. He was pretty useless, wasn't he?"

A short laugh bubbled from Aang and he found himself unable to contain it. "Yeah, he was," Aang snickered. "Just asked me some questions, said I was interesting, and flew away. Weird how he talks like he's multiple people, though."

"My experience has been the same, Aveytarr."

Aang grinned. "I'm not so sure the name fits."

Trinket nodded once more, his brow furrowed in concentration. "You're so right," he chirped. "Useless _Owls_ makes a whole lot more sense. What say you?"

"I say... I say that works just fine."

They kept their pace through the woods in comfortable silence. Aang found himself immensely glad that Trinket was so easy to talk to with his mind muddled and stressed and all around broken; it was nice to have someone else to pick up the social slack—even tighten the rope a bit too much. Trinket's effervescence pushed his inevitably dark brooding to the side. And, in the end, brooding was beneficial to none and would only extend the time passed in the Physical World.

If he were honest with himself, he hadn't the foggiest idea as to why Trinket followed him. He could feel the other boy's eyes drilling observant, inquisitive eyes into his back and, as it grew progressively unbearable, so did the silence become increasingly suffocating. His heart once again began to race as thoughts of being without the Avatar Spirit plagued his thoughts once again.

"I don't think I'm the Avatar anymore," he blurted. He blushed slightly at his unhinged behavior.

Trinket bounced up beside him excitedly like a child before a storyteller. "What happened?"

Enthusiasm was not the reaction Aang had been expecting—disappointment, sadness, maybe confusion, but not intrigued excitement. He sighed, scolding himself for not realizing by then that Trinket hardly seemed to have any other emotion at all.

"When I woke up," Aang started grudgingly, "I tried to contact Roku and I couldn't. And it's really hard to explain, but I could feel the Avatar Spirit being ripped out of me." He shuddered.

"Roku's the last one, right? The old ugly guy with a beard and red robes?"

Aang looked at the other boy slowly and nodded with a perplexed expression painted on his face.

"I don't like him." Trinket sniffed.

Aang stopped walking and looked back to Trinket, flabbergasted. "What?"

"I don't like him," Trinket repeated with a pout. "He's mean and old and when I tried to talk to him he smacked the back of my head and told me to go bother Avatar Kyoshi."

"_What?_"

Trinket's broad, boyish smiled returned full force. "And I did. She's an absolutely wonderful woman, Aveytarr. Have you met her? We probably talked for fifty years before she fell asleep and I got tired of listening to her snores. Lovely lady, I tell you."

"That's..." Aang fumbled at forming a proper sentence. "That's—_wow_. Um." Aang shook his head. "Wow."

"That is one stunning lady. A proper lady."

Aang struggled to ignore the comments. "So do you know how I could get out of here?" he asked, gesturing his arms to their surroundings. "I have no idea what's going on or why I'm here."

Trinket tapped his chin. "Nope. But I bet that Koh could tell you. He's a pretty smart guy."

Shivers ran down Aang's spine at the mention of the Face Stealer. He hoped to never encounter that spirit again. "I'm sure he could," Aang said warily. "What about someone else?"

"Nope," Trinket said brightly. "Koh's the only guy in town who's old enough to know. Something weird happened a while ago, and it's been relatively vacant." He sniffed. "It's been lonely. And _boring._"

"Surely," Aang sputtered desperately, "_surely _there's someone else I could ask?"

"Nope," Trinket echoed, though he did wear a pensive, thoughtful expression—the first of his Aang had seen. Soon enough, however, the look was gone and replaced with his ever-present bright smile. "Yeah, nope," he assured. "Nobody else. Won't this be a fun adventure?"

_I guess you're coming with me, then, _Aang thought grimly as the thick, ghastly dread of once again being forced to face Koh oozed into his bones and his gut.

As to be expected, Trinket was either completely unaware of Aang's increasing terror or simply didn't care. "I have a twin sister named Bagatelle," he chirped. "She could find Koh. Isn't this exciting? I'll lead you to her. Let's go!"

"Great," Aang muttered gloomily, watching Trinket bound off in a seemingly random direction.

- —** — **— -

**A/N: **Well, there's that chapter. First off, I want to thank everyone who's been reviewing... and encourage everyone to do it if you like the story. It's _really really _motivating. :)

I'm really not sure about this chapter. As it turns out, Aang is incredibly difficult to write for me without his group of friends with him. And I'm not sure I got Trinket across without being annoying. Tell me what you think. OCs are inherently hard to mix with canon characters, but these are necessary.

Until next time... Thanks for reading, everyone!


	4. Separate Paths

**A/N: **AP tests and projects. Yuck. Also some symbolism in this chapter, so besides it being a boring ramble, I'm actually fairly proud of it. I hope you enjoy.

**Providence  
Chapter 4: **_**Separate Paths**_

- —** — **— -

"Read that last part again?"

Katara groaned. Sokka had been painfully obstinate in his efforts to ensure that the letter to their father was _perfect. _After being obvious in his quick emotional attachment to Hawky, she wanted to send the letter as quickly as possible to prevent any further heartbreak. Unfortunately for her, the Water Tribe warrior had many a time thwarted her attempt to secretly finish the letter and send it away in his inattention.

"With that in mind," she read dutifully in a mediocre aristocrat's voice from beside Aang's prone form, "despite our hope to rendezvous with you and your men, we will refrain from doing so." She cleared her throat and frowned. "The land around Ba Sing Se, let alone the land surrounding your encampment at the mouth of Chameleon Bay, is much too dangerous to travel with Aang unconscious." She looked back up at him. "Regards, Sokka and Katara of the Southern Water Tribe," she deadpanned. A bubble of laughter escaped Toph, and she wiped her eye and sighed, amused.

"Spirits, Sokka," Katara sighed exasperatedly, "This sounds like a business arrangement. We could have just said, 'Aang's been hurt. We want to meet up with you, but it's too dangerous right now.' This is _three pages _long."

Sokka frowned. "And leave out how we met Aang and what's happened so far? I don't think so. What if he thinks we just ran off for a fun adventure?"

"Didn't you tell him anything about Aang when you met up with him?" Katara asked, bewildered.

"A little, but you can't ever be too sure of these things!," he cried. She rolled her eyes and shrugged. "What do you think, Toph?" he asked.

"I'm not sure what a real personal letter is supposed to sound like. But yours just sounds stupid to begin with."

"Thanks," he whimpered. "Aang would have agreed with me. I'm sure being the Avatar means he has built-in 'business arrangement' skills."

She looked softly to his prone figure beside her. "He _is _well spoken."

"And we men need to unite anyway," he huffed. "I'm tired of being ganged up on by you two."

"Men?" Toph scoffed. "He's just a kid! His voice has barely started cracking."

Katara glared. "A few months older than you, if I remember correctly."

Toph puffed an indignant gust of air against her bangs. "My age only makes my abilities more impressive."

"Whatever you say."

Toph and Sokka had arrived back to the cave the night before to the image of his sister looking almost as dead as the Avatar did. Her hair disheveled, large bags weighing down her closed eyelids, and an uncharacteristically pale complexion, they did well to be quiet and leave her be until the next afternoon. The waterbender had awoken in a comparatively bright mood, and though it had dwindled the more she tended to Aang over the course of the day, her disposition had remained largely positive. For that, Sokka was glad.

The rain had ended as abruptly as it had arrived. They hardly discussed Kuei, Sokka being reluctant to spur on whatever tantrum had surely driven him away in the first place. She had simply shrugged, unaware that her brother had met up with the former king in the forest, and claimed that they had come to a mutual agreement that it was better for him to leave. He wanted to go find Bosco, she said, and it was left at that.

The more they talked and joked over the waning hours of the day, the more Sokka came to realize just how volatile emotions had run. Over the course of the few days since Aang's fall, dispositions had ranged from anger to joviality, from despair to solemn contentedness. He wondered if it was Aang's injury or simple absence that caused the mental instability of their group. Kuei had been driven away already, and though they were close, he pondered grimly how many outbursts it would take to split their group even further. Moods seemed positive enough—especially after the pleasant distraction of writing the letter to his father—but it had been made clear multiple times just how quickly everything could crash.

A lightning strike was a different kind of wound, it seemed—and coupled with the completely unknown effects of the Avatar State, it was hard to tell specifically the progress (or regression) of the boy's recovery. Katara cleaned the unsightly wound regularly and changed the bandages even more so, but the injury still oozed pus and bled through the white cloth strapped over it. The herbs purchased the day before managed to keep the smell away, but only just. What ate at their minds more than anything else were the hoarse groans at night, or, worse still, his defeated whimpers.

Worst of all were Katara's poorly stifled sobs as they drifted through the cave entrance, only faintly audible over the crackling of the remnants of the day's fire. Sleep was rare in those moments.

- —** — **— -

It was hot.

Hotter, in fact, than Kuei had ever had the misfortune of suffering through for more than only a few minutes. Not to mention the humidity; it reminded the former king of the saunas he enjoyed back in his days of royalty.

Saunas were good when shirtless and relaxed in a dark room. Saunas were not good when trudging through the mud with three layers of High Society robes.

It was the blasted rain that did it. The mid-spring heat was usually tolerable. Barely noticeable, actually, and it would have been if he wasn't doing the workout of his life in weather that made one feel like he was sweating before he started sweating. He couldn't remember how long he had been walking, but it had been a very long time—the longest at once in his entire life, and a meal hadn't found its way into his stomach since Sokka's mediocre fish meal the night before, a meal he hadn't quite mentioned in his spat with the waterbender. And he _stunk. _He could smell himself and could only imagine what he would reek of when he finally sat down and took off his robes. Under his arms, sweat slid against sweat. Legs burned. Robes clung to his lower back, wet with moisture and rendering the skin in contact red with friction.

Kuei wanted to find Ba Sing Se and he wanted to find Bosco, but achieving that reality felt more and more like a far-off dream. He was driven by determination, but it was half-baked; under it all was the knowledge that if he stopped to make camp for the night, he would be forced to accept what a _colossal, _potentially fatal mistake he'd made. He was a king. He was meant for the golden chair that sat in the Ba Sing Se palace; he was born for royal treatment and adoring citizens. But the difference between reality and desperate imagination grew starker by the minute. Every hour his rear was absent from his throne felt like life being sucked from him.

Or perhaps he had been sucking the life from the throne his entire incumbency...

An ephemeral gust of wind pushed against his backside, passing straight through his wet robes—full of both sweat and the undried rainwater from the downpour that ceased an hour before—and he thanked the Spirits for its cool relief.

Wherever the bison had landed must have been only on the cusp of the hilly terrain, for the land was smoother and easier to walk over despite the greater abundance of trees. Unfortunately for him, however, he had been walking long enough that his tiring legs increasingly counteracted the benefits of the more manageable terrain.

It was during the several hours since his departure that Kuei discovered just what a special breed of clumsy he was. Even the most hidden of potholes and other obstacles of the ground did nothing to trip or otherwise stop him, but in the more thickly wooded areas, roots, stumps, and low-grown branches were the bane of his existence. Dark, muddy stains of various shapes and sizes colored his once-tidy and once-neat robes. He held his head high in an effort to distract himself from the egregious shame of soiled clothing, but this only worsened the problem, leaving him even more prone to falling than before.

He looked at the sun that flickered through the open spots in the web of leaves above him as he moved. It was another low, dark red sun, just like the night before when the boy with the tattoos got that nasty burn on his back. But it was a different kind of omen this time, one that he didn't understand, but knew wasn't terrible. Well, he hoped it wasn't terrible. His private tutor never told him how to read the sky, and far be it from him to try and figure it out himself.

This time he had freedom. He could sit as he pleased or walk as he pleased and the world would be none the wiser. No servants would clean his robes overnight. When he woke up, he knew, the green robes still wouldn't be very green, his spectacles would still have that odd scratch on the edge of the left lens, and his hand would still have the welt from Katara's water whip. This time he was driven by determination, and fear, and some shame. Fear of shame, more like it. His father was named Kuei, as was his father before him, and his grandfather's father. Kuei was the fifty-second in a long line of Kueis and every single one of them had kept the Kingdom in tact. He was the first Kuei in sixteen to leave the Palace and perhaps the first to never return. His immediate lineage being rather dull and boring, Kuei had always hoped to be remembered. This was not what he had in mind.

Not all of them had ruled perfectly. His most recent history lessons had vaguely outlined Avatar Kyoshi's creation of the Dai Li—then perceived as saviors and protectors of the city—because of a corrupt king, but all of Kuei's predecessors had still all died and been buried in a city thought impervious to war. The really _wasn't _a war in Ba Sing Se. Not for fifty-two generations. He didn't mind this illusion being broken; he only wished it had been under the rule of the fifty-_third _Earth King. Or maybe the fifty-first.

Kuei was a stew of bubbling, burning self-loathing with a thin film of denial coating his surface. He vaguely understood the improbability of his plan to rescue Bosco and, perhaps one day, Ba Sing Se, but he chose to believe in its inevitability because he enjoyed the concept more than an insignificant death in an insignificant forest. Surely he was meant for more?

Another treacherous tree root, jutting out of the ground in a semi-circle, intercepted his foot and sent him tumbling face-first into the mud. Despite his other falls, his head had somehow still managed to stay relatively clean, but this time, the mud, like pudding, swallowed up his arms and knees, leaving nothing between his shocked face and the puddle of viscous, coagulated brown slop. It ate his face with a _slap _and he was so miserable and ashamed and embarrassed that he didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He'd never fallen into mud prior to that afternoon and, more specifically, he hadn't _ever_ planted his face in mud until now. He lifted his head to look forward, but it was only kept elevated for a few moments—enough to take a breath—before his lower back, burning with exhaustion, capitulated, leaving his face in the mud once more.

Angry at the world and decidedly apathetic of the state of his robes—it couldn't get much worse, he reasoned—he rolled onto his left side to at least give himself room to breath and gasped for more air. He lay in the mud for a few minutes, exhausted, mourning the loss of his dignity and ashamed of the way he quite liked the feel of the mud against himself, before slipping and sliding and slicking through the mud to the grassy bank on the edge of the miniature mud pond.

Once more he sat in quiet, mindless silence on the grassy bank after unceremoniously wiping the slop from his face and shaking his hand to flip away the excess filth. He had never felt so tired. His eyes drooped but his stomach cried out for attention. How on earth would he manage to find food? A little less than an entire day had passed since he had enjoyed any, and he felt lightheaded.

Fire. Yes, Sokka used the Fire to cook codsalmon the night before. And the Water Tribe boy was no King. If _Sokka _could manage it, Kuei reasoned, then he himself should be able to accomplish it without much issue.

And perhaps it was time to make camp for the night anyway, he thought.

Sighing, he stood and walked for a few minutes before finding a gap between the trees large enough to be a makeshift camp. This would be his palace, he thought with only a hint of smugness. His palace in the woods.

The triangular clearing in question was hardly a clearing. The three trees marking its edges towered above, casting a dark shadow over the lumpy, grassy, rocky ground below. A long, fat root wound its way through the clearing's center and popped out of the mud in a small arch before disappearing entirely. Like the rest of the woods, it smelled of oak, of grass, and of earth.

He ached for some sort of civilization. But the earth was homey; it scratched an itch that had pricked at his core, hardly noticeable, during his days cooped in the palace.

And so started his quest to make fire. He'd never built one before—his servants had always managed the hearth, and he'd never set foot in a kitchen—and though he didn't particularly enjoy the experience the first time, he knew well enough the first step: gathering firewood. Surrounded by wood, the task wasn't so difficult. Eager to prove to Sokka and Long Feng that he was, in fact, a _man_, he made it his goal to collect the largest logs he could manage.

He'd make a fire larger than the likes Sokka or Long Feng had ever seen.

His confidence didn't lull as his task wore on. Within a few minutes, he had a sizable pile of logs, each about as thick as his thigh. He tucked them closer to the center of his pit, wearing a pensive frown as he considered what on earth he would do next. He had read books about the art of making fires as a young boy, but at the time, he had been much more interested in the romantic tales of Oma and Shu, the mysterious liaison of Avatar Kyoshi, the imported _Love Amongst the Dragons..._ The escapism he experienced when engrossed in his books as a child—a child plagued with frustrations of imprisonment and propriety and crippling loneliness—didn't, _couldn't _compare to the escape he felt now. Freedom had never felt so rewarding, so merciless, so profitable. Even his favorite stories and plays always had a last page or a curtain closed, but the forest seemed endless, for better or for worse.

Ever-thirsty for new and fantastic tales, a book about wilderness survival was something he didn't, _couldn't _care about—not when he never thought he'd see the a real forest in person. But with adulthood came a more relaxed and apathetic attitude to his incumbency, and this only worsened the issue. Now he wished he had given the fire book the light of day.

Before the nonplussed Kuei, the pile of logs continued to sit, the direct manifestation of his freedom: palpable, quenching, but only just. Only slightly out of reach. There _was _an answer to the great predicament of actually lighting the fire, he knew, he just didn't have the slightest idea what it might be. He wished he had payed more attention when Sokka had managed it back at Katara's cave. With a desperate, small epiphany, he remembered the Water Tribe boy taking a smaller stick and drilling into the pit. Friction was what he needed.

It wasn't long before he found it a few dozen paces from his camp—a moderately long, skinny, but sturdy stick that had been left behind in search of larger ones. He gathered it greedily and took it back to the pit, sat carelessly in the mud, crossed his legs, and placed the stick standing vertically on top of a large log jutting out of the base of the pile. Flat-palmed and on either side of the stick, his hands moved back and forth as fast as he could manage. His brow furrowed, his arms burned, his tongue protruded from his mouth in concentration.

He hadn't been spinning the stick for a minute before his hands had slid to the base of his rod and not a single ember glowed in the pile. He huffed and tried again, harder this time, but his battle against the wood only resulted in sore palms, further exhaustion that crept boldly from his arms to his shoulders and eventual backside, and an ignition stick that only grew duller by the second. Determined to prove the universe wrong—that the ample payment of confidence from his already low reserves wasn't an investment wasted—he put all his might into the stick, but it snapped in the middle, leaving his hands flying in a downward arc and eventually colliding with a jagged edge of bark. A shallow gash stretched diagonally against the sides of both of his palms, and he hissed pitifully. Suddenly furious at his misfortune, face burning with self-loathing, he stood up in a huff and kicked the offending log as hard as his already spent leg would allow. Another yelp escaped his lips as his toe smashed into the wood, and the log hardly budged. He picked it up and chucked it into the surrounding woods with a fierce cry, but it only landed a dozen paces away.

Eyes unfocused, chest heaving sporadically, arms and legs exhausted, dehydrated and starving, he fell unceremoniously against a tree. His eyes shut tightly with pain and a deep, hollow dejection that shuddered to his core.

Kuei slid down the tree, eyes still closed, and slowly ended up in a sitting position. He felt stiff as a statue as his conscious floated from his body in search of more comfortable times. He snored.

- —** — **— -

When Kuei spotted the river, he almost wept with joy.

Fortunately, the lacking reserves of his dignity were kept secure, and the whimper was cut short by the thick knot in his throat. A day and a half—since the night before last—his stomach had remained royally empty, and any water he found was soiled by mud. He tried not to think about what sort of parasites or other filth he had enthusiastically slurped in. That river was his ticket to clean water and, with any small amount of luck, a source of food.

He searched for a more agreeable route down, walking parallel to a dangerously steep decline that descended directly into the roaring, gushing waterway. He tried and failed to calm his racing heart at the thought of tripping into the unforgiving waters below; he couldn't swim and, as he had learned the hard way after a day of walking, he was dreadfully clumsy: even the smallest root or other protrusion from the ground had the propensity to send him tumbling and rolling to an unpleasant, gurgling, bubbling death. Predictably, he tried not to think about it.

Like everything around him, the river was lined thickly with trees and bushes and long, yellow grass that stuck up between his legs and tickled his knees and pricked inside his legs. The faint sound of the water whirled at his ears as he scanned the depression, the patchy light from the trees twitching with the wind. He felt stiff, and tired, and sore—_painfully _sore, so much that even after an hour of walking and loosening his joints, each step reminded him rather brutally of the punishment he had imposed on his body the day before. His steps were short and awkward as though something had been stuck up his rear, his upper back stiff and unmoving, his neck holding a suspicious, lingering pain that he was sure would soon travel to his head for a very unpleasant headache. Not that any were pleasant, but those from dehydration, as he had soon discovered, were the most unforgiving of all.

For so long he had postponed settling down for a camp because he knew that the _instant _he did so, he might be forced to let reality soak in: that his zealous foray into the woods had ended in pathetic, merciless, _deadly _failure, but he was only half right. His unmitigated procrastination had left him so exhausted that he didn't have the energy to continue his endless inner monologue; in that respect, his efforts were a success. It still felt like a dream. Kuei's quest was still unvalidated, unacknowledged by fate, and despite its loitering at the back of his mind, he truly hadn't yet considered the possibility of his death. The idea that soon, there was a very real possibility of being reduced to a rotting corpse and a confused former king in the Spirit World. That animals would pick at his carcass until only a pile of bones, waiting to be buried, lie still in the grass.

_No—_No, he hadn't considered the possibility. Consideration was acknowledgement, and acknowledgement made the situation real. An imposed naïveté was the only viable option; anything less was unacceptable and would do untold things to the weakening fragility of his mental state. But did an awareness of his faux-ignorance count? Or did that break the rules? Perhaps there were no rules...

The grass crunched under his thinning slippers, the wind flapped his cloak. The ground, as did the river beside him, began to slope very gradually downward, and over the trees below and before him a hardly perceptible column of smoke rose above the prison of wood and vine, and he stopped walking. His droopy eyes did their best to widen, a faint smile did its best to taint his lips—smoke meant fire, fire meant people! Oh, how he missed people! And they might even have water or, better yet, food. And they might have a new royal pair of clothes for him—and, _and _a cup of white wine, aged, of course, because he really did like a small glass of wine to go with his dinner, even after the likely huge amount of water that he would drink. That they would give to him.

He picked up his pace and his body protested, but the adrenaline easily overpowered his limbs' apprehension—would they know he wasn't king anymore? How embarrassing. Surely, though, they would know of the validity of his royalty, of his claim to the throne. And honest claim to the throne was as good as a dishonest man who already had it—and who was he kidding? He started to jog towards the smoke. He had only been out of Ba Sing Se for a few days. Only the highest ranking military personnel more than a few days' journey from the great city would have any word at all of its fall. Its capitulation.

The trees passed him by, the grass blurred beneath his feet, and for the first time since that petulant waterbender had forced him, through her great injustice, from the cave, he allowed reality to sink in, because it was finally going to be okay. He was going to find new friends—new constituents—and they would give him food, water, and white wine, and it would all even itself out. His issues would fix themselves: the trip to Ba Sing Se with his companions would be a walk in the park (though he hadn't ever had such an experience, he had read countless tales of its relaxing and even romantic effects) and he could figure out the rest, like getting Bosco and his city back, once he arrived. He was almost pleased to have lost the city — which of his forefathers could claim to have taken the greatest city in the world back _single handedly _from the world's greatest enemy? None of them. And he would be the first.

He could hear the fire now, its crackles, the embodiment of everything he couldn't achieve before, now easily within his grasp. This was the true nature of things. Of course he couldn't make the fire—he wasn't meant to, _fated _to. His destiny was in the clouds, in the palace, ruling over those who loved him. He had more important things to worry about than trifle fires; his people would worry about such things for him. The people he would take back in Ba Sing Se— the people he was about to pleasantly surprise. He wasn't meant to love. He was meant to be loved. Such was the way of the Spirits, and such was the way endowed in him.

He could see the fire now, its volatility, its practicality, its illumination poking through the wood, taunting him, encouraging him to run faster to those who would take him home. He rounded the last tree and stepped into the clearing, slowing his pace to a full stop and taking in his new acquaintances.

Before him were four men, one noticeably young and another noticeably old, two of average age, all of them wearing armor painted black and red, sitting around the fire. The middle-aged men had spears and pointy helmets, the old man had some sort of pastry that he had just taken a bite out of but had promptly ceased upon the new arrival, the younger one was sharpening some sort of stick with a rather large and aggressive-looking knife but also stopped, shocked.

"I'm King Kuei the Fifty-Second," Kuei said. "Will you take me home?"

The lieutenant and the private grinned.

- —** — **— -


	5. Songs of the Mist

**Providence  
Chapter 5: **_**Songs of the Mist**_

- —** — **— -

It was a strange thing, traveling with a spirit.

Then again, perhaps he should have been used to it by then, Aang thought meekly to himself. He was, after all, half-spirit himself—at least he _had been_. He had lived his entire life spiritually linked with thousands of his predecessors and directly harboring the Avatar Spirit himself, so spending time with one shouldn't have been such an exotic experience, but it _was. _It was foreign and awkward and though Trinket rarely knew what _not _to say, Aang often found himself struggling for any sort of appropriate response at all, let alone one to actually contribute a valuable sentiment to the conversation. So maybe it wasn't traveling with a spirit that was the issue—it was traveling with _him._

Only the soft crunching of the snow and grass beneath the two boys' feet could be heard. It was sickeningly silent, the gentle rhythm of their footsteps suffocating. He remembered the pervasive liveliness of where he entered the Spirit World—the perpetual bird songs, the gentle breeze, the vines and other overgrowth that crawled over anything and everything, how starkly it contrasted with the scene Aang found himself in. Not a cricket chirped in the vast but constraining whiteness before him. With the cold came death.

Really, he wasn't sure when the scenery had changed so drastically; the change was instant but imperceptible—yet another incomprehensible aspect of life and death in the Spirit World, it seemed. But the snow emanated an ubiquitous sense of foreboding; unlike the unsettling feeling in the forest of before, this was undeniably ominous. There was something sinister about the way Trinket had fallen unusually silent, the way the trees seemed to be watching him, the way the wind had stopped dead in its tracks. It should have been a beautiful sight. With the change in scenery came a terrain that was much more uneven—almost mountainous. Hills loomed into the thickened clouds, valleys sucked into the ground, and a faint fog shifted lazily over the ever-present coating of ice and snow.

But the trees were dead, ugly, and wiry, almost gray in color and almost entirely without leaves. The way they twisted and turned from the blank sheet of white was unnatural, malicious, _vigilant. _Aang suddenly wished to return to the previous setting that he had so desperately wanted to leave, but it was too late, and Trinket never stopped walking. Breaks were unnecessary in the Spirit World, or if they were, he wasn't sure if the other boy was ever going to give them any consideration.

"I don't like this place, _Aveytarr_," Trinket said weakly. His quiet voice cut through the deafening silence. "Have you ever been anywhere like this before?"

Aang hummed. "I remember flying to a forest like this once," he replied. "It was in the Patola Mountains, where I grew up. But it wasn't anything like this."

"No," Trinket clarified, "I mean a place to bring your dead. Do you have those in the Physical World?"

A shudder ran up Aang's spine at the implication in the other boy's words. "The Air Nomads don't—_didn't _bury people. We burnt the bodies and scattered the ashes on the wind." His breath visible, his nose and cheeks flushed from the cold, Aang held his arms as he walked.

"I wish we did that. I've never been here before, but this place gives me the creeps," Trinket replied. Aang ignored the impulse to ask the other boy why he was leading them through an area he'd never been.

"So this is where spirits bring their dead? I didn't think spirits died in the first place," Aang said curiously.

"They shouldn't."

"Oh," Aang said dumbly. Desperate to change the subject, he realized that there had been little to no discussion on Trinket's past, and figured it was as good a subject as any to pounce on for conversation. "So, uh, do spirits have parents? How old are you, really?"

Trinket shrugged. "I don't know how old I am." He grinned and poked Aang's nose. "But we do have parents, in a sense. I just haven't seen them for a few thousand years, and that was just coincidental."

"Don't you miss them?" Aang asked with a brow raised, scratching his nose. "I never met my parents, so I don't, but Katara—er, my friend really misses hers."

Trinket shrugged again. "I don't really care about them." He piddled with his fingers and looked away. "They're fun to talk to, but not as much as you are."

Aang stopped, furrowed his brow, and looked up at the other boy with a confused frown. "You don't care about them at _all?_"

"Not a bit," said Trinket nonchalantly. He didn't stop walking, and Aang hurried to catch up. "Why would I?"

"Well," Aang started, a bit lost for words, "because—because they're your parents. Aren't you supposed to care about them?"

"That doesn't make much sense," he replied. "I don't see the point."

"Wait just a second," sputtered Aang, thoroughly baffled. Perhaps Trinket was even stranger than he thought—and even slightly sinister... "You don't see the point in caring about people? Do you care about _anyone_?"

"Emotional attachment is kind of boring, and all it does is cause problems."

"It makes people _happy_," Aang insisted. "It makes people happier than you could imagine."

Trinket shook his head, clearly not impressed with Aang's argument. "It makes people happy for a little bit, and then when something bad happens, you wish that you'd never had anything to do with it in the first place." He scratched his cheek and smiled. "It's better to just not care about anybody."

"Then why are you helping me at all?" Aang asked, disappointed.

"Because you're interesting." He grinned and gave an exaggerated wink.

"Um... thanks," Aang mumbled dumbly.

From that conversation grew Aang's realization that he had little to no idea about the thought processes of spirits—that they loved and hated and simply acted on fundamentally _different _terms than a mortal like himself. Empathy had always seemed so inherent to Aang—instinctive and without thought. It just _happened_, and an explanation was never needed, most notably during his time growing up at the Air Temples, but it was surprising how difficult it was to explain compassion and companionship logically—especially to a spirit like Trinket who seemed to spend the majority of his time existing outside of logic completely.

Aang's unease at being led straight to Trinket's sister and, by proxy, Koh, multiplied into cold dread at the thought of being led there by a spirit whose sense of value of Aang's well-being relied entirely on amusement. How could Aang trust Trinket to even lead them to Koh at all? Without empathy was a lack of any morality of the sort Aang was used to, and the more the former Avatar brooded on the subject, the more sinister and fundamentally grim Trinket's presence felt — not because of bad intentions, but because of the thorough lack of good ones. Trinket was a hedonist in every sense of the word, and while that wasn't necessarily a bad thing, it was its combination with the perspective lack of value in empathy that terrified Aang.

But there were no other options. While the journey to Koh's lair was a relatively easy one from his entrance to the Spirit World at the North Pole, judging by his setting, Aang didn't have much reason to believe he was anywhere close—and he hadn't the foggiest idea where Trinket's sister resided. Traveling with Trinket was dangerous, but traveling without him was an easy ticket to falling into some sort of terrifying trap or, worse yet, spending an eternity wandering the shifting, ephemeral terrain of the Spirit World.

As they walked, the air grew colder, the snow whiter, the wind softer. Death seemed to radiate from the trees that only seemed to grow thicker as they traveled on, but at the same time they were _too alive: _their supposed attentiveness was imperceptible but made the hairs on Aang's neck stand on end. Without even the smallest gust of wind, even with the comparative loudness of the crunch of their footsteps against the snow, it was more quiet than ever. Coupled with the profound unease Trinket had created in their earlier conversation, Aang felt cripplingly alone. Alone and scared and upset, and though he wasn't tired by any means, he wanted to stop traveling because their environment was only becoming worse as it moved past them.

The whole forest seemed to be sucking the life out of Aang, and Trinket had shifted from a solemn quiet to an antsy, quickly-spooked disposition that was easily observable even as they moved. But Trinket supposedly knew the way to his sister, and trusting his guidance was all Aang could do to make it out of the Spirit World and back to his friends where he belonged. He missed them so much it ached. They would have made him feel better. Katara would have made him feel better.

It was during the time that Aang was lost in his thoughts that a rolling mist crept along the wet, icy surface of the ground.

It was a thick fog, one that veiled everything outside a radius of twenty paces or so. It was white, just like the snow and just like the clouds that loomed above them. _Everything_ was white, and Trinket seemed to only want to move faster because of the cloud, but that made him harder to follow. The nonexistent wind pushed the fog into them further, and as their vision became increasingly limited, Aang wanted to voice his concern to Trinket, but he couldn't find the words to do so. The trees became even thicker as they walked at an even faster pace than before—almost at a jog—and the fog became thick enough to block the sky, and it became all Aang could do to keep track of Trinket's figure trudging through the snow in front of him. That was when he saw a face in one of the trees.

The face was a deep scowl of wood, the most evil and vile thing Aang had ever seen on a supposedly living creature, and his stomach dropped to his feet because suddenly _every _tree had a disgusting, wicked face and then _all the trees began slowly moving towards them._

"We need to get out of here!" Trinket whispered, and broke into a run, dodging through the slowly moving trees as quickly as he could. Aang did his best to keep up, but it was incredibly difficult to be agile because he could no longer use his airbending to supplement his speed, and he had to consciously resist the urge to use the trees for cover because they were the very things he was fleeing. And it was difficult enough trying to simply _see _where Trinket was running, let alone dodge the trees with his new handicap that he hadn't put much thought into before having to run for his life. But all thought processes had ceased, and his body had taken over, doing its best to chase a spirit that Aang hadn't much trust in to begin with.

A choral hymn emerged from the mist, singing slowly in an unknown language, and whatever creatures producing the shrill sound had the voices of children and sharp, hissy consonants, slow and deliberate and absolutely terrifying. Its slow pace contrasted staunchly with Aang's increasing heartbeat, the tension in the thick air palpable as the trees seemed to only come for them faster, their faces growing only more abominable, and the pace of the children's hymn behind the sound of their footsteps increased in pace in response.

Trinket was too fast, the trees too thick, the fog too opaque, the sharp hisses of its music too paralyzing in the fear it imposed on the former Avatar, and Aang simply couldn't run fast enough. A root sprouted from the ground so fast that Aang hadn't even a chance to dodge it, and while it failed to make a firm grasp on his ankle, he tripped and tumbled to the bitter cold snow that blanketed the ground before him. Looking up to see Trinket, his last hope of freedom, fade into the fog and out of sight, too quick and too apathetic to the miseries of another to make an effort to help, Aang gasped as another wooden limb gripped his torso with brutish strength.

The trees swarmed around him, their wooden faces smirking in impish delight as their branches wrapped and tangled and knotted themselves around him, and Aang watched in morbid fascination as other roots stabbed the ground next to him like the tentacles of a sea monster, cutting the cold earth into a dark, gaping hole that _radiated _evil, and the roots released him only to send him tumbling into the abyss.

With a scream of horror, he took the plunge.

- —** — **— -

Trinket wasn't sure what to think.

He had lied to the _Aveytarr _when he said he hadn't been here before; he had, but he didn't like to remember the experience, so he chose not to. There was a very strange feeling of dread in his chest that felt a lot like guilt for bringing the _Aveytarr_ to such a place, and though Trinket had never felt guilty for something before, the emotion was thick in his stomach and easily recognizable. He just wanted to get out of that place and make it stop—not that he had even wanted to come here begin with, but that feeling in his gut that pointed the way to his sister when he needed it had never lied before. The Spirit World was tricky in the way that it folded over itself and changed, and Trinket had to trust his gut compass.

But the mist was more terrifying and the trees more foul than he remembered, and despite Trinket's belief that he had successfully avoided the terrible place where the wood began moving and the fog began singing, he didn't, making it only more crucial that he led the _Aveytarr _out of that place and avoided the trap he fell into last time. Picking up his pace, he further ducked and dodged through the wicked woods, and despite not having checked behind him for quite some time, Trinket was sure that the _Aveytarr _could manage to keep up because, between the two of them, they were about the same size and equally frightened for their lives. But as the boy jumped and twisted and dived under the aggressive branches, he checked behind himself just to make sure that his acquaintance was keeping up.

But behind Trinket was only the fog and the vicious wooden faces.

No, _no,_ this wasn't supposed to happen—no, the _Avatar _was supposed to keep up, because if the Avatar wasn't keeping up then then he had almost assuredly been buried by the trees, and Trinket knew where that tunnel led. He had to make sure that the Avatar didn't reach the end of the tunnel, because at the end of the tunnel was something more terrifying than any scowl that any of the trees could make.

He shrieked as a branch took advantage of his inattention and wrapped itself around his arm, completely undeterred from his struggling and desperate attempts to punch it away, and in his further distraction, a root slithered from behind and gripped his stomach firmly before yanking him backwards in a powerful twitch, sending Trinket face-first into the freezing snow. He struggled as the trees moved closer and closer, wondering all the while why the only thing he could think of was if the Avatar had already met the same fate.

He watched with grim fascination as the trees began burrowing his tomb, but before he could be tossed in, firm claws grasped his shoulder, pulling him swiftly from the tight grip of the furious trees, and the creature shot up with him into the clouds before dropping him momentarily, shifting in the air so that Trinket landed on its enormous back. The boy gasped in relief, clutching at his throat where a tight strip of wood had been coiled only moments before.

"Thanks, Useless Owls," Trinket choked. "I owe you again."

"We should have known you'd be mentally deficient enough to return to this place," the purple owl said. "And that is not our name."

"We have to find the Avatar," Trinket shouted desperately. "We have to save him. He was taken by the trees."

But the owl continued to flap its wings nonchalantly. "What is the point? Was he really so amusing to risk your existence again for his sake?" Its voice was smooth and spoke of an impossibly old existence.

The boy said nothing for a moment, his hair and pants flapping in the cold wind of the sky. "No," he finally said. "But I want to anyway."

"Very well," the owl sighed.

"I know where his tunnel will lead," Trinket said darkly. "Come on!"

- —** — **— -

It was surprisingly warm in the darkness.

Comfortable, even. The earth was soft, the air was sweet, and there was a pleasant, warm draft that gently brushed against his cold face. If Aang were being honest with himself, he wasn't sure why it appeared such a grim fate to be sent into such a hole. Despite the complete lack of light, it was better than his time above ground in every sense. He stood weakly, still rather traumatized by the trees that put him there, and felt his way along the wall as best he could in the blackness. The dirt wall crumbled away easily at his touch, and he could feel the almost fluffy earth landing on his toes.

But as he inched along the smooth, friable wall, he placed his foot where no earth was there to catch him, and he found himself tumbling down a long and dark tunnel, and he thought that perhaps his comfort was misplaced, because the trees were nothing if not malicious, and there couldn't be anything good in this tunnel. He grunted in pain, something solid hitting his strangely sore back as he rolled through the darkness, but began to see a soft blue light reflecting off of the dirt surface. He finally stopped his tumble, stood, brushed the dirt from his clothes, and took in his surroundings.

Ice-blue fireflies illuminated the dark, winding passageway as they flew in seemingly random directions. They shied from his proximity but ultimately led him down the channel that seemed to only become more convoluted the more he traveled, converging with countless other passages on his trek, but the fireflies led the way. He wasn't sure _why _he was following them, but there was something oddly mesmerizing about the serenity of their color, the way they lit the dark, the way that he couldn't quite make out their form against their own illumination.

Eventually, the tunnel evened out into a direct, straight passage to a far-off light in the distance. The walls grew farther apart, and fewer entrances and exits broke the surfaces beside him, but he kept walking because there was a strange, unnatural ringing sound that reverberated in his ears that felt like _home,_ despite it being completely incomprehensible, and that light in the distance was so hypnotizing...

He blinked and climbed the stone steps into a dark basement, realizing without much thought that he was in the Southern Air Temple and that this was the meditation room two floors below the entrance to the dormitories. He breathed the scent that smelled so much like what he remembered though slightly off, but that was okay, because the ringing in his ears subsided and slowly morphed into the joyous sound of children playing on the foyer steps, the annoyed screeches of lemurs as they were pounced on by young airbenders with mischievous glints in their eyes. When he opened the last door, he was blinded by the sun's light but didn't feel its warmth, and he waved to Jin Ju.

"Gyatso and Katara are waiting on you!" the other boy said said with the cheeky smile that was almost like what Aang remembered, and Aang nodded in response and couldn't quite make himself smile. He moved down the corridor, noticing the way that the walls still had the char and that there were still stray bones littered against the corners, but he kept walking, taking in the potent, sweet aroma of the fruit pies that he had almost forgotten since he ran away, and when he turned the corner, he could see them.

They were sitting in his room having a chat at the very end of the hallway, Katara sitting on his bed and Gyatso in his chair, and Aang noticed that the door was much larger than he remembered, but that was okay because they were both there, together. And Katara's eyes lit up when she saw him, and she smiled in her own beautiful, esoteric way and gestured for him to come sit down, but Gyatso wouldn't dare let Aang sit down without a hug, and the old man stood with a bright, welcoming smile and opened his arms invitingly for the hug that Aang had so wanted to give for so long. His guardian's pose reminded him slightly of when Aang found his bones, but this was the real Gyatso, and Katara had tears in her eyes for some reason, and Gyatso began appearing progressively more pale the closer Aang moved, and he was just about to wrap his arms around the man that had raised him and made him who he was and then the pain would stop—

"Don't touch him, Aang! Run!"

And the vision rippled into nothing, and the ambient noise of the temple gurgled into a horrible, impossibly loud ringing, and Aang was standing in a dirt clearing underground with an enormous tunnel that led what looked like miles straight up to the surface. Trinket was flying to him at breakneck speeds on an enormous purple owl, and when Aang's eyes dropped from the sky, he saw a glowing white figure with a face so malignant and evil, it put the trees to shame, its face pulled into a wicked, toothy scowl that could never be formed on a human, and Aang could _feel _the burning hatred radiating from the being and bouncing off of the walls and into his core. It slowly lifted its immolating white hand to touch Aang with a foul hiss, emanating loathing and disdain in a way so passionate that Aang thought was reserved for love.

But Aang didn't care—he was paralyzed because he had lost _everything_ again, and he looked to his feet in capitulation, the cold water beginning to leak from his eyes as he let out a miserable cry of emotional defeat, waiting on the cold, burning touch of the monster before him. But firm claws grasped his shoulders and lifted him up away from the malignant being, and he felt empty inside as he surged upward through the tunnel, and he didn't even slightly wince as they burst through to the surface, the cold wind assaulting his thin clothes like a wall of ice, and Aang decided that he hated the Spirit World more than anything he had ever hated in his entire life.

- —** — **— -

Aang wasn't sure how long they flew, but they landed in a cave on the side of an impossibly steep, looming mountain. It wasn't so bitterly cold there, and there were no trees in sight that appeared anything like the ones in the death forest before. Aang's senses had grown sharper since they had escaped, and the ringing had subsided into sweet silence, but he felt more like an empty shell than ever. He followed Trinket silently into the dark cave, sat against its walls, and began to cry harder than he could ever remember doing, even more than in the night after discovering the genocide of his people, almost choking on his own sobs and not even bothering to wipe away the tears.

The owl had morphed into the winged cat that Aang remembered meeting earlier, and Trinket sat looking rather helpless as Aang unraveled, and when the former Avatar looked up and met his eye for the first time since he had been left behind, he saw sadness, empathy, and compassion behind their amethyst exterior. The consummate apathy that Aang was so sure the other boy had for anything but himself had been reduced—or elevated—to pity. To care.

"Thank you for saving me," Aang said shakily, wiping his eyes. He felt emotionally drained and, more poignantly, physically exhausted, a feeling he thought impossible in the Spirit World until now.

"I don't know why I did," Trinket said meekly with a slight blush, shifting his weight as he sat and looking away. "The Useless Owls wanted me to leave you, and I don't know why, but I wanted to help."

"That is not our name," the cat said.

"Well, thank you," Aang said again, this time with more conviction but somehow softer and gentler than before.

"I've never saved anyone before," Trinket mumbled, unsure of himself. He looked to Aang apprehensively, as if terrified of something the boy might say. "Does this mean we're friends?"

Aang laughed, but it was a soft and happy one, and Trinket felt slightly more assured and slightly endeared because he realized that this was the first time he had ever heard the _Aveytarr _laugh like that—with genuine contentedness. "Of course we can be friends," Aang said with a bright smile, the first since they had entered that horrible, icy forest.

"I've never had a friend before," Trinket blurted softly, his face flushed even pinker.

Aang smiled. "I'll teach you."

- —** — **— -


	6. Songs of the East

**Providence  
Chapter 6: **_**Songs of the East**_

- —** — **— -

The boat they put him on smelled like fish.

It wasn't the good kind of fish, though—the kind they used to make for him in the Palace of Ba Sing Se. It was so much stronger than what was cooked for him what felt like decades ago, and so raw and bitter and disgusting and Kuei hated it. He hated the boat and the people on the boat and, most importantly, Kuei hated himself. He felt vulgar and stupid to the core—he _oozed _disdain and self-loathing, and it was more vile a feeling than whatever offensive odor the boat could excrete in his wildest nightmares.

It was funny, really, how closely they watched him before they realized the extent of his uselessness. Weapons were always drawn, at least two people were always vigilant—uncomfortably so, as if he was some prize apt for running away. Eventually, much to Kuei's simultaneous relief and profound disappointment, the Fire Nation soldiers came to the conclusion that the former king was helpless: without assistance from both himself and any allies. After that point, they simply stripped him out of his obtrusive royal clothing and put him in a very simple peasant's garb before tying him to the mast and letting him bake in the swelteringly hot noonday sun.

Perhaps more painful than the supreme fall from high hopes to utter despair was the torture of watching his captors go about their business, navigating the river with nonchalant self-confidence. It was a small craft of metal and wood: a single mast behind which only a slight elevated backend for a humble downstairs compartment, mostly made of some sort of steel, rested. Above the chamber sat proudly the captain's wheel, manned by the old man from the camp which Kuei had entered. This was the direction that Kuei faced, staring the lieutenant commander anywhere but in the eye.

He was an older man, the kind that seemed as though his face was wilting away, his nose and jaw pointed and his eyes sharp. Adorned on him was the standard Fire Nation sailor's armor with lined plates and jagged shoulders, but the red paint was a bit lighter, and on his chest rested a silver, fire-shaped medal that was probably supposed to be significant. He was fair skinned, probably with a modicum of Earth Kingdom colonial blood that he likely wouldn't ever admit, and he was clearly doing his best to pull his balding hair into an erect top-knot, but suffice to say it was not working out so well.

It was before this older Fire Nation lieutenant that Kuei realized he was going to die—and in a way far more humiliating and grim than what he'd imagined in the woods. Starvation or death by other natural but unpleasant causes versus a public execution was not a choice Kuei ever dreamed would be imposed upon him, let alone on anybody, but lessons on the terrible reality of the world were becoming more commonplace the longer he had been out of the Palace. He knew it was irrational, but he couldn't help but blame the Avatar; everything had gone so horribly wrong after the boy's arrival—life had become acerbic, full of learning but all about the wrong things. After the Avatar challenged everything Kuei had been raised on, reality had cut into him, and it was sharp and cruel, and Kuei wanted to go back to the time that he was ignorant about the severity of existence—when life was empty, not his stomach.

Was his father aware of the Dai Li's systematic oppression of free speech and free thought? How long had the Royal Lineage been used as a proxy for the cultural authority's power? How long after Avatar Kyoshi created the force did they morph into a web of inescapable schemes and cold-blooded materialistic loyalties? Of these questions Kuei hadn't any answers, but they lingered about his heart, haunting him as he made his naval journey to a ghastly death with insults and lobbed vegetables and a lot of people.

He didn't know his father well. King Kuei the fifty-first was dead by the time the fifty-second was eleven, and it never made a lingering impact because Kuei had spent the majority of his time around nannies and Dai Li officials instead of his parents, likely already being prepared, like an ill-made dish, for a stifled life of half-baked apathy and profound unfulfillment—the supreme irony being that the Dai Li, established as the cultural authority of the city, had designated the already inherently held powers of superficial management to the real king and sucked away the actual significant command to themselves.

But he had bigger problems to worry about, he thought as the younger man in the crew started walking towards him with a small knife in his hand and a very determined glint in his eye.

He approached Kuei and looked him over as if appraising and inspecting him for some sort of attribute. When he appeared not to find it, he shook his head, disappointed. He had a boyish face but was clearly in the transitory period to adulthood, the telltale signs of maturity subtly emerging in his features. His eyes were a strong orange, a true Fire Nation blooded individual, and everything about him was regal. He would be a high ranking man someday. A strong chin, an even stronger posture, and deeply intelligent eyes, his youthful face did little to subtract from his ability to intimidate.

"Reports say you left Ba Sing Se with the Avatar," the man said. His voice was smooth and deep for his apparent age. "If you tell us where his friends took his body, you'll be rewarded with food. If not, well..." he trailed off before chuckling darkly and pressing his knife aggressively against Kuei's cheek. Its metal was bitingly cold against his warm skin. "Let's just say I'd be enjoying it a lot more than you."

Kuei swallowed, sweat percolating on his skin in terror. This changed everything—no longer was it about a quick execution; now it was a question of torture, deliberately inflicted pain the likes of which Kuei had never before experienced. He was a bad liar to begin with, and he had to think a way out of this before he inevitably revealed his allies' location and brought about their demise. While a humiliating and insignificant death frightened him, the very concept of bringing about the death of the Avatar and his friends horrified him to his core, regardless of the disdain he held for some of the group's members.

"I—I can't tell you," Kuei sputtered, knowing that he was going to regret his decision to disobey the man but firm in his conviction.

"Can't, eh?" The man lifted the knife.

"_Won't,_" Kuei corrected unsteadily. "I won't tell you. I won't put them in danger," he said firmly, hoping to somehow convey a determination much stronger than the uncertainty he felt. The man approached him slowly, the knife raised.

"I was hoping you'd say that," he whispered wickedly, the stench of fish strong on his breath. He raised the knife to just below Kuei's temple before pausing a moment. "I've always been a man of persuasion," he said as the knife pierced his skin, and Kuei gasped in pain. "The secret is that actions speak louder than words," he murmured slowly, dragging the knife inch by inch across the former king's face—under his eye and over his nose and down to his lower jaw, and Kuei was already uncertain of how long he was going to manage staying silent about their location, let alone _awake_ as he groaned in torment. The pain was more intense than any he had ever felt in his life, and he could only imagine what sort of agony that the other man could induce if he truly wanted to hurt Kuei.

His face throbbed with each pulse of blood that spilled from the wound, tears gathering involuntarily at the sides of his eyes at the horrible stinging sensation, and Kuei already wanted it to end more than he'd wanted anything in his life. It was a passionate and insatiable desire for relief from the merciless torture, and, after only just a few moments (that seemed like an eternity), he was already seriously considering capitulation. Torn between a fear of regret of giving away the Avatar's position and a fear of regret of forcing himself to endure more pain, he waited for the blade to reach the bottom of his face before gasping for air.

"It can end if you tell us where they are," the man said.

Kuei stewed in desperate indecision, and the man took his apprehension as a rebellious silence. He once more raised his knife, now red with the blood of royalty, and placed it at Kuei's other temple.

"Wait," Kuei gasped. "I'll—I'll tell you where they are," he whimpered in self-loathing. "Just stop and I'll tell you."

- —** — **— -

Eleven hours later, his face still ached.

It was a dull suffering, but suffering nonetheless; it pulsed unapologetically to the beat of his heart. But worse than the pain was the supreme irritation of how strongly it _itched_—he wanted nothing more than to tear through the ropes that bound him and make it all stop, never mind escaping escaping the ship. The cut had since closed over, that much he could tell, because every time he blinked he could feel the tightness of the dried blood on his skin.

Searing hot exhaustion trickled over and down his torso and limbs, still boiling from the heat of that afternoon, and burned his muscles to the core. While he wastied quite firmly to the mast of the rocking ship, he was still forced to provide a modicum of effort to prevent his sore body from sagging into the sharp ropes, and the longer his captivity lasted the more it seemed to Kuei that he was merely choosing between varying forms of extreme discomfort, all relatively similar in caliber.

It was almost a full moon on that relatively warm night, but not entirely. It would be another day or two yet before the cycle was completed, but he wasn't sure if he would even be alive by that point. There really was no telling when or how they would execute him, but death was almost certain; they had squeezed the location of the Avatar from him (the man seemed quite surprised that the boy was alive), and Kuei doubted the Fire Nation would find any other reason to let his heart continue beating.

On the bright side, as promised, they fed him after he reluctantly admitted the information. It was a decently large meal of fish, and, mediocre as it was, it was food and he was glad that the ache was gone from his stomach. But the terrible guilt that he had put the Avatar in danger made his indulgence a miserable one.

The trees which rolled lethargically past them beyond the bank of the river slowed, and the boat angled itself slightly towards the shore.

"We're stopping for the night," the old lieutenant on the wheel announced gruffly, and the two men with helmets worked to stop the boat and rope it to a tree with impressive efficiency. The old man approached Kuei and regarded him, deep in thought.

"What are we going to do with you?" he mumbled to himself, and Kuei jumped at the chance to perhaps find comfort.

"I'm sore all over," Kuei whimpered, wincing because the movement of his mouth tugged at the gash across his face. "I've had to stand all day to keep from cutting into these ropes. Isn't there some way I could lay down?"

The man sighed, and Kuei was sure he was seeing things, and it was hard to know for sure in the dark, but it almost appeared as if pity flickered across the other man's face.

"Oh, alright," he grumbled with a sigh, but the malice was clearly half-baked. "We'll keep you tied up, but you'll get to lay down."

He was true to his word. Within the hour, Kuei's arms had been tied firmly behind his back and his ankles roped firmly together, after which he was unceremoniously tossed next to a tree nearby the established campfire. Despite the admittedly uncomfortable position, once again a feeling of homeliness and inexplicable gratification washed over him at his snugness against the earth, stronger than his time in the mud after leaving the Avatar's cave. It wasn't the kind of comfort that would allow him any shuteye—late at night as it was—but rather one that he simply wanted to savor and enjoy like a fine wine, and he actively fought the urge to attempt to roll in the dirt like an animal covering its scent.

For a moment, the strange sensation allowed him to forget the guilt and dread that gripped him by the stomach, but he soon felt them once again clawing at his gut, intent on making him as miserable as possible. He had almost forgotten the ache of the gash across his face, but it fought vigorously to make itself remembered.

All of his captors found their way into bed, and no watchperson was established for the night. Where the Kuei of yesterday might have been annoyed by their confidence in his thorough and commiserable inability to escape, he surprised himself by seeing opportunity. Perhaps escape was possible. _Just like the fire was _possible _too, _he chided himself, but escaping was potentially easier than creating fire, and this time, not only had his crippling ego been somewhat managed, he wasn't predisposed to a method of doing so that could taint his thought processes.

But, on the other hand, he wasn't predisposed to a method of doing so... meaning he would have to invent it himself. This was an issue, as Kuei had really never been placed in a high-stress situation and forced to work himself out of it. His intelligence bloomed in reading and mathematics and history, and here, laying in the dirt under the breathtakingly beautiful stars and surrounded by Fire Nation soldiers, it only seemed to wilt, and with it withered the modicum of confidence he had garnered by being left in inattention.

But regardless of confidence, there had to be some way of escape. With his hands and ankles tied, crawling away would either wake up his captors or result in a miserable night of inching along the ground and being inevitably recaptured (and punished for his insolence). As far as he knew, he wasn't a bender (none of his forefathers had been, at least), and it wasn't as if there was a conveniently placed sharp rock on the ground—and even if there was, it couldn't be sharp enough to cut the thick ropes, and it would be too dark to see, anyway.

The fire—the anchor of the camp, the reference point by which everything was compared—still flickered and cracked lightly, seemingly the only other being in the camp that was awake. Fortunately, the smoke had long since stopped, giving his nostrils and watery eyes, still unaccustomed to the air outside the palace, a night of peace. But he could still feel its radiating heat. He didn't think he could burn the ropes without severely burning himself, and for all he knew, his dry bindings could flare wildly enough to wake his enemies.

Enemies. It felt strange to label them as such, but Kuei supposed it was appropriate. There was a war to think about, and he was a king for the opposing side. Well, he _had been _a king. And something about a genocide...?

Flickering in and out of the dark from the close light of the fire sat an old wooden stool, on top of which sat a knife. It was the knife used to slice across his face, and it was the knife that his torturer constantly whittled away at sticks with.

It was the knife that he was going to use to escape.

He rolled slowly towards the fire, taking note of any sounds. Each soldier had a tent, rendering it impossible to tell if one of them had shifted out of sleep, but he rolled nonetheless. Within a few moments, the fire's heat had greatly intensified, and he felt his side touch the stool in question. He sat up so that his back was against the fire and the stool, grabbed the knife clumsily and desperately, and began whittling away at his ropes as best as he could manage.

The work was gloriously quiet but terrifyingly slow. His inability to put any real strength into the cutting due to the awkward position, coupled with the dull blade's lack of serrated edges, made the work slow and even exhausting. What felt like ages later, the outermost portion of the rope around his wrists was only halfway through, and he considered giving up with the growing exhaustion in his wrists, but as he recalled the complacent efficiency with which he had been tortured and the imminence of his surely impending death, he decided that the work was not so bad. Eventually, the rope was cut to its last few fibers, and with a desperate twist of his arms, the rope snapped quietly and fell from his wrists in defeat.

He held the knife in front of himself in disbelief. _It worked! _He could hardly believe it—one of his plans actually _worked_, and with a triumphant but determined grin, he twisted himself about so that his legs were before him and set to work on the rope about his ankles. Able to put the strength of his arms into play, the second rope was defeated much more quickly, and he filed the knife into his tunic and stood.

If being in the forest instead of the palace felt like a dream, he wasn't sure what _this _felt like. It was all so surreal; more surprising than his capture was his escape, and before Kuei could ponder this amazing fact any more, he was startled by a loud and brutish snore from one of the tents.

_Oh, right. I should get out of here now._

Determined to somehow hurt those that had captured him, he grabbed one of their backpacks from the side of a tree before tiptoeing out of camp as quietly as he could. This comically exaggerated walk lasted for quite some time, and once Kuei was sure that he was out of earshot (and covered by the noise of the fork in the river) he sprinted as fast he could to the trickling water and indulged himself in several mouthfuls. Unlike the bank near his capture, this was close to the water and amiable, and it made for great relief. But as he let his hands down to scoop more liquid from its course, a rock beneath his knee dislodged from the weight, and Kuei found himself tumbling headfirst into the shallow end.

He submerged with a splash and a frightened yelp, and in his terror and surprise—he couldn't swim—he didn't have time to appreciate that he was out of earshot from the soldiers and that he had removed his backpack before his accidental submergence. He twisted and spun underwater as the current nudged him gently downstream, but eventually, instinct took control and he managed to swim to the surface. Gasping for breath, he swam gently against the soft push of the water, and though he was wet and cold and exhausted and slightly hungry, he felt _alive._ He laughed at the feeling and at his own bad luck, basked in the exhilarating beauty of the shimmering night sky, thrilled at the way the cool water rushed against himself, delighted in the memory of the adrenaline that coursed through his veins as he escaped. Never before had he felt so knowing yet innocent—before he hated all that he didn't know or understand, but now he wanted to conquer it. He wanted to risk it all for fun, he wanted to use the knife and the backpack that he had stolen—_he stole something!_—from the soldiers, he wanted to find his way to Ba Sing Se, he wanted to find Bosco, and he wanted to learn about the world and the people that lived on it, he wanted, _he wanted..._

But they weren't crippling wants; instead, they sprouted ambition from the seeds of his ignorance. The monumentality of his task fueled his drive, but at the same time, he just wanted to climb out of the water, lay on his back, and look at the moon. He had never done anything like that at the palace, so why not now?

So he did. He watched the moon, felt the pulse of the earth, and made sure not to fall asleep. He had ground to cover.

- —** — **— -

The next morning, after almost an entire night of walking east, Kuei came across a small town. Its building style seemed to mimic Ba Sing Se, though it all looked rather dull without the sheer mind-boggling volume of the big city. Without the scale, things seemed disappointingly unimpressive, but that was okay, because it was unexpected civilization. He hadn't opened his backpack at all for some reason and still harbored no desire to do so; it didn't feel like food, whatever the items were, so there was no real pressure to make sure things didn't spoil. Instead, he mostly forgot about them and thought about sleep.

Despite harboring a deep contentedness and optimism that radiated from his core, he was still exhausted. The food he had been given for his betrayal (for which he still held sharp guilt) simply wasn't enough to cover his unintentional fasting before his capture _and _the trek all night. He needed food, he needed rest, and he wanted a comfortable place to attain both of them.

Wearing poor-people clothing was strange, but, admittedly, he was still very nervous about being captured again, and he was happy for the makeshift disguise. It was convenient to be presented with camouflage by the very enemies from which he intended to hide. Frankly, with the attacks on Ba Sing Se that the Avatar and his friends informed him of, he wasn't sure why the quaint village was without a Fire Nation occupation, but he supposed it must have been out of the way. Either way, it worked out nicely for him.

He meandered down the dirt road, taking in his surroundings and delighting in the way the breeze felt against his sunburn from the day before. It felt like ages ago that he had escaped. The journey through the night, though tiring, was one of fascination and clear, crisp air. How had he overlooked the twilight symphony of cicada-crickets during his time in the cave? The burning red and green horizon of Earth Kingdom dawn? There was still so much to see and experience, and he hoped it never got old. For the first time, Kuei considered the possibility that perhaps leaving the palace was good for him. He still ached to return and take his rightful place at the throne, but in the meantime... he needed only consider the possibilities.

He was sure that the settlement harbored an inn somewhere, but, unless there were any objects of value hiding away in his backpack, he would have no means of paying for a night—unless he could somehow manage to barter his knife away. But he didn't quite like that idea; he wanted to keep it. It had a range of practical uses, and though he hadn't the foggiest idea how to properly use it in a fight, he wore the evidence on his face of the dull blade's effectiveness against the human body.

Fed up with walking, Kuei made his way to a bench and sat down with an unceremonious flop, removing his backpack and placing it next to him while he leaned his head against the wall behind him.

He watched as the people strolled by, going about their daily business while completely unaware of his former status, and the bags under his eyes grew heavy. _I'll just rest my eyes for a moment, _he thought as his eyelids drifted together.

He snored.


	7. Reconsiderations

**Providence  
Chapter 7: **_**Reconsiderations**_

- —** — **— -

It wasn't a full moon that night, but it was close enough; the shadows on the rolling steel of the ship failed to fully combat her radiance.

But Zuko hadn't been graced with a wink of sleep, his stomach churning with dread and uncertainty. Little did the concern of being still rejected by his father upon his return home taint his mind, oddly enough; instead, when he closed his eyes in a desperate attempt for rest, the image he was met with was not of sweet blackness but of blinding death—the flash of the lightning that slipped from his sister's fingers, the smoke that sauntered from the wound, the horrified expression on the waterbender's face as she caught his corpse.

The Avatar was just a child when he met death—supposedly, anyway; the waterbender's spirit water rendered it difficult to be sure of such things.

It was only after listening to the Water Tribe girl speak of her loss in a way so relatable, cruel, and caused directly by the nation founded and ruled by his forefathers—the nation that he had fought passionately for his entire life, that was directly intertwined with his identity, that was the direct manifestation of his abilities as a bender—Zuko realized that perhaps the Avatar was human, too, and the circumstances that birthed him as the Avatar over a century ago had led him down his own path that pitted him directly against the Fire Nation. That the universe was playing with all of them, forces at work larger than Zuko or the Fire Nation or the Avatar, and that something went terribly wrong when that boy fell.

It was all just hard to tell—hard to make out the right answer, the right way to think. For how forward the airbender was in his perpetual dance with danger, _surely _he had faced his mortality by the time he met his demise; it wouldn't be unreasonable to think, Zuko thought to himself, that the Avatar knew the risks he constantly took, knew the unfair odds in the gamble for his life, and if he _did _know, then was it such a crime to bet on the winning side? But, minus the technicality of his century-long disappearance, the Avatar was _so young_—though likely only three or four years younger than Zuko himself, just enough to still embrace a strong naiveté and be as incredibly stupid as the he had constantly been, from riding the giant sea monster at Kyoshi Island to getting himself caught by the Yu Yan Archers. Or maybe it wasn't stupidity or ignorance—maybe it was _courage_... But courage is only useful if you don't die.

It was an odd thing, thinking of the Avatar as a human, but it was necessary to the acceptance of the ultimate likelihood of his death.

Zuko's honor would soon be restored by his father, and though his face would remain scarred his entire life, his father would still be proud upon his return. But that sentiment didn't cure him of his wakefulness, didn't clear the image that appeared when he closed his eyes—of the way the boy arched his back when Azula's bolt struck him, the emptiness in Katara's eyes as she held him, the look of supreme disappointment in his uncle's eyes more intense than he had seen on anyone.

He was a little over a day's journey from Caldera City where he would meet his father and everything would be made right again. He was unable to look at the moon, instead focusing his gaze on the way the ship cut its way through the waves. It was a warm Fire Nation wind, thick with the humidity of the ocean.

The best way to cure his problem, he knew, would be to permanently get rid of everyone he had hurt in the catacombs of Ba Sing Se, and it would be like none of it had ever happened, and he could live out his days in peace with his honor and the happiness of his youth restored... or at least the best way that could be managed with a sister like Azula. He wouldn't ever be able to eliminate his uncle, but perhaps one day the old man could be convinced that what Zuko did was for the good of the Fire Nation—that Zuko was no traitor, and that he did the right thing. And, on the bright side, strangely enough, he had Azula's support that he made the right decision. Perhaps that was reason for doubt, but he clung to the affirmation like a lifeline.

So when, as he leaned over the balcony, a hawk flew to the ship, and he managed to intercept it before his sister or any of her guards did—and it was addressed to Azula, outlined that the Avatar was alive, and gave the direct coordinates of their location—he wasn't sure what to think.

On the one hand, it was incredibly disturbing that the Avatar was alive at all—Zuko _saw _him fall, _saw _the absolutely dead expression on his face—because his honor was in question yet again. A furious rage bubbled within him: would he ever be free to live his life without constantly worrying about his honor? The Avatar and his friends would stop at nothing to torment him until his last day, it seemed. And on the other hand, it pleased him that he knew their location, and suddenly he had an outlet for his anger—the fury that the Avatar dared to survive.

Zuko hadn't killed anyone before, but that night, on the very same balcony that he received the letter, he wrote the death orders of the Avatar and every one of his friends and gave it to the hawk, pushing it into the air and watching it fly into the moonlight, wondering if ordering an assassination was the same as killing someone outright, and thinking that it certainly felt like it.

Mai approached him with a yawn a few minutes later. "What are you doing up so late?" she asked, bored. "It's the middle of the night, Zuko."

"I got a little seasick," he replied meekly. It was a poor denial and they both knew it. He had spent two years of his life at sea.

She moved to him and kissed his cheek. She was warm. "Stop your worrying. Ozai will welcome you back, and if he doesn't, then he's a big idiot."

A small smile twisted on his lips. "You could go to jail for saying something like that," he replied.

"Then it's a good thing he can't hear me," she quipped, amused. Her voice was as smooth as always, monotone but with just enough character to be charming. She rested her head on his shoulder. "You should be happy, Zuko."

"I _am_ happy," he said softly, but his eyes weren't on the beautiful girl on his arm, they were on the horizon where the faint image of the messenger hawk could still be seen, flapping its wings against the temperate moonlight and carrying death in its claws.

_But, when you come out of it, you will be the beautiful prince you were always meant to be._

"I'm happy," he repeated.

- —** — **— -

On the sixth day after the fall of Ba Sing Se, Aang's wound showed signs of infection.

After calming from her initial extreme panic, Katara approached the others and they discussed the best course of action. It was made clear very early on that leaving the cave was an absolute must, but the question was _where._

"Well," Katara proposed with a noncommittal shrug, "we could go back to Gaoling."

If she had known just how heated of an argument the trifle suggestion would have spurred, she thought, she might have just not even mentioned it. Sokka jumped on the idea, it being a roundabout way of achieving easier access to their father, but Toph vehemently opposed any ideas of the sort. Take her anywhere but near her parents, she spat, and though Katara sympathized with her position, Toph's petulance and insults eventually sucked the waterbender into siding with her brother without much thought. This, of course, left Toph fuming and yelling at levels which Katara suspected were only a cover-up for the girl's insecurity of returning back to her family. But Aang was more important than her insecurities—Gaoling had always been far removed from the war due to its thorough lack of strategic advantage, and it would be foolish to ignore its relative safety, Katara thought, especially since the bounty hunters chasing Toph had been taken care of. Not only that, but with possible access to the wealth of the Beifong family, Aang would have more than enough of the medical attention he truly needed.

Before the infection, even with the assistance of the herbs and her regular healing, his wound had continued to be a perpetual source of what cycled between tremendous stress and tremendous relief. He would roll over in his sleep and break open the wound, and for the next few hours it would ooze and bleed and simply deteriorate in general, and just before Katara would begin to panic, things would return to normal and Aang would go back to wearing that wistful smile that he tended to do in his sleep. The relief sated her need for his well being, but only just; within another few hours, the cycle would begin once more. And this time, it seemed, it finally caught something malicious in the air. She blamed herself.

Her rapidly escalating frustration and despair at the universe, the Spirits, Aang's wound, and Azula, coupled with the recent response from their father (after which Hawky mysteriously disappeared) and, along with his condolences for Aang's condition, his reluctant admission that he couldn't join up with them either, inevitably led to a discussion on what their next plan of action was. Despite the cyclical nature of Aang's wound, it wasn't reliable in the slightest, and as time slipped away, the cave had seemed less like a safehaven and more like a prison—a limbo of undying grief, completely cut off from news of the outside world, both good and bad. They had all known it was high time to leave, even before the wound was infected, but deciding to leave was far removed from analyzing the best target location.

Pondering the friendliest venue that was best suited for Aang led the Water Tribe siblings to realize just how many places they had visited in their travels.

The Northern Air Temple was the closest option, but it meant flying blind through a colossal mountain range that only Aang was familiar with—and while flying around the mountain range _was_ an option, since the invasion at the North Pole, as Sokka did well to point out, the western coast was almost sure to be a heavily patrolled area; both Water Tribes were completely without herbs for healing, and Toph would be without sight on the slick ice; the Southern Air Temple was just as deserted as their current location; Senlin Village or Makapu were unlikely to have a suitable doctor capable of treating Aang; Omashu was taken by the Fire Nation; reaching their father meant a perilously long journey around the entire southern coast of the Earth Kingdom; and the swamp was, frankly, an even worse infection waiting to happen.

Gaoling was the only suitable option.

And so they packed. Aang had already been (carefully and prudently) displaced to the back of the flying bison who stretched and wiggled his toes gleefully at the entrance of the cave, his spirits drastically improved in anticipation of the potentially long flight and at such close proximity to his earliest friend, no matter the boy's poor condition. But despite a decided plan of action, spirits weren't exactly improved, and the packing process became an endless cycle of petty arguments that left Katara on the cusp of breaking down. Irrational and irritable, they often escalated simple disagreements or misunderstandings to the point where they forgot the original point of the dispute.

"I don't care," Sokka spat as he tied the sleeping packs together, hunched over and looking down, keeping his scowl to himself. "It's _my _fault that Aang got sick—I didn't get the right herbs, or enough of them, or _something_, and you should be in the back keeping watch over him anyway," he huffed, heaving the bags onto the saddle. Momo chattered wildly at them, but they paid no heed.

Katara appeared thoroughly uncomfortable. "You've hardly ever steered Appa before! How do we even know you'll _get_ us to Gaoling, let alone quickly?"

"I happened to find us this cave on Appa, if you remember," he growled.

"Will you both shut up!?" Toph snapped, stomping her foot and rumbling the earth. "Who cares who steers? Let's just pack up and go to Gaoling already!"

It was at that moment that a man in a brown tunic dropped from the closest tree and stabbed Sokka in his shoulder with a very short but intimidating knife.

Sokka let out a brutish scream of shock and recoiled—he hadn't yet felt the sharp pain, but he felt the blade slide into his flesh, heard the repulsive sound of the metal biting into his tissue. Looking up to his attacker, Sokka noted the red pattern tattooed across the other man's face, and before he knew it, he was dodging a strong punch directed at his eye, the blade still lodged firmly in his upper chest, and the missed punch left the attacker tumbling forward, gracing Sokka with full access to the knife. Wincing, he gave the blade a strong grip and tugged it from his flesh, and that was when the full agony of his injury hit him full force.

Another carnal howl slipped from his lips and, full of rage, he turned and attempted to jab it in the neck of his attacker. His opponent caught the knife by the blade, wincing at the deep gash it made into his hand, and took advantage of Sokka's use of his arm to move against his neck on the same side. The strike made contact, and Sokka felt his head spin and saw his vision blur, but he managed to knock the assassin off balance and onto the ground when, about to make the final blow with his borrowed blade, Sokka looked up.

Katara seemed frozen in place, unable to force herself to move, and while Toph and Appa had managed to deflect the arrows materializing from the trees, the waterbender failed to make any reaction to the scene around her until an arrow jutted into her left arm, ripping her clothing and almost pushing her to the ground with its unrelenting force. She gasped in pain and used her uninjured side to conjure a water whip and deflect several more projectiles, but in her moment of inattention, another man with a knife approached her from behind.

"Katara!" Sokka yelled, but there wasn't enough time for her to react. He threw the knife with his unharmed arm, aiming as best he could with his shoulder injured severely, and watched as the blade cut through the air and pierced the other man's neck. Blood spurted from the wound, and Sokka watched in horror as he writhed on his way to the ground.

Turning around to take care of his own enemy, he saw his first attacker fleeing to the woods. But more archers and arrows seemed to be emerging from the trees, and after giving his all with the knife, he didn't think he could muster the strength to do the same with his boomerang—and it seemed that Katara was suffering the same problem.

"We need to get out of here!" Toph yelled. "They're after Aang!"

Horrified comprehension washed over Katara's face, and she scrambled to Appa. Several bolts of wood protruded from his legs and tail, but more overwhelming than his injuries was the unrecognizable and intimidating man on his saddle. She lept up the bison as quickly as she could and launched the attacker from the saddle with a fierce whip of water, immediately turning to check Aang for injuries as Toph launched herself and Sokka onto the bison with Momo not far behind them.

"Yip, yip!" Sokka choked, but they had already taken flight by the time he had landed.

The three of them held on tight and ducked as Appa evaded more arrows, eventually reaching the clouds as the bison groaned in misery at the situation.

After the ride smoothed, Sokka immediately fell back into the saddle, clutching the bloody concave of his shoulder and gasping for breath. The pain was nauseating and relentless and, now that the adrenaline had mostly subsided, the teen quickly learned that even the smallest movements of his torso would be met with painful retribution. Breathing was difficult, and beyond the pervasive pain in his shoulder, his dry throat burned for some reason. Slightly dazed, he only noticed that Katara was sitting in front of him when she lifted his hand from the wound. He moved his fingers experimentally with glazed eyes, his palm bright red with blood.

For Katara, on the other hand, the adrenaline still coursed wildly through her veins as she observed her brother's consciousness trickle from his shoulder. She winced the moment her eyes met the wound, and she knew that this was far more important than the arrows that still protruded from not only her body but Toph's and Appa's—they too needed to be dealt with, but the wounds weren't as urgent. She pulled water from her pouch and began healing the tear in her brother's flesh, taking care to detect any blood in his lungs.

"Do either of you have _any _idea what just happened?" Toph asked, slightly disturbed but far more furious about the arrow protruding from the side of her thigh.

Katara shook her head as she turned to check for the third time that Aang was, in fact, okay—sans the infection, at least. Her hair disheveled and flapping in the strong high-altitudinal winds, stress rolled from her in waves.

"No, all I know is that they were Fire Nation," she bit out. "The real question is how they found us."

"Kuei," Sokka choked, wincing and shifting uncomfortably at the strange combination of acute pain and subdued pleasure radiating from his shoulder. He had felt his sister heal minor scrapes or bruises before, but this was something else entirely. "It had to have been Kuei. He's—he's the only one that knew where we were. He's probably in Fire Nation custody right now." On the bright side, at least his mind was coming back to him.

Katara inhaled sharply, an intense rage bubbling within her, her loathing for Kuei multiplying boundlessly, but she quickly exhaled as she realized that _she _was the one that drove him away. Her throat tightened, and her moistening eyes surveyed her surroundings, from the arrows still jabbed in Appa and Toph to the still bloody wound of her own brother. Sokka raised his brows in indication that he was well aware of her darkening train of thought.

"Katara," he prodded gently.

"This is all my fault," she choked, working even more desperately on her brother's wound as if to pay a heavy debt. "I'm so sorry."

"You couldn't have known," Toph added reasonably.

"I _should've_—ugh, I can't believe I was so stupid! Of course he would get caught," Katara moaned, putting a hand over her eyes in shame. "He's _Kuei_, and this whole place would have to be _littered _with Fire Nation soldiers since the coup, and—and—"

By then, Toph had felt her way along the saddle and placed an uncharacteristically comforting hand on the other girl's shoulder. "Stop," she interrupted. "Katara, who cares whose fault it is? The real villain here is the Fire Nation and the king's own stupidity," she countered with a mollifying smile. "Look, whatever guilt trip I know you're going to put yourself through, just know that none of us hold this against you, okay?"

"You're right," the waterbender conceded with a capitulated sigh. She pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes tightly in an attempt to calm herself, her other hand still healing her brother. "I know you're right," she repeated, but she still appeared perturbed. "We'll still need to find a place to land soon. It's probably not a good idea to try and heal his legs while he's flying."

"First things first, you need to take care of yourself and Toph," Sokka reasoned. "I think Appa can still fly a little while more." He looked over the saddle. "Can't you, Appa?"

The bison roared in response.

Toph grimaced as she fingered the small, bloody arrow protruding from her leg. "Yes please. Getting this stick out of me would be nice."

"How are you even managing to bend with that arrow sticking out of your arm, Katara?" Sokka asked, nodding anxiously to his sister's wound. He rolled his shoulder gently, wincing but desperately attempting to convey that he was definitely better off than before. "Seriously, I'm fine for now. You'll probably have to do some more work on me later, but I'm not going to die."

She closed her eyes at the mention of death, and when they opened, they were on Aang.

"Okay," she agreed.

So she removed their arrows and did as best she could to stop the pain and bleeding, but she still felt it necessary to hold back and allow strength to take care of Appa. The arrows were barbed and difficult to take out, but Toph, with much time and concentration, managed to metalbend the barbs inward to make the removal as smooth a process as it could possibly be, unpleasant as it still was.

Changing direction mid-flight to shake off any followers, they eventually landed in a grassy field. As Katara did the best she could with Appa's injuries, grim as the situation was, it still gave her immense satisfaction to be on the ground and _not _in the woods. It was as if the trees had been closing in on her, burying her in the cave where she could do nothing but watch Aang. It was exhausting, depressing, and here in the fresh air, she felt a modicum of excitement to finally be out of the stony prison. It gave her an opportunity to once again realize the true nature of her current mission: protect Aang at all costs until he woke... and then a little bit after that, too.

"Regardless of what happened with those assassins—or even in Ba Sing Se, for that matter," Sokka began frankly, "I can't help but be happy we can finally _go _somewhere. Gaoling was the right choice."

Katara nodded. "I'm sorry we'll have to see your parents Toph. I know you don't think you're ready, especially after they sent those bounty hunters, but... I think this could turn out well."

Toph shifted awkwardly. "About that," she sighed. "Gaoling isn't a good idea."

"We've been over this," Katara explained, already fueled by the frustration of their earlier argument. "Gaoling is—"

"No, hold on," Toph interrupted. "This isn't about what you think, Katara. I promise."

Katara's expression softened, but her lingering readiness to pounce again was almost comical. "Then what's it about?"

"It's my turn to get all emotional and apologize for getting us into another mess," the earthbender started with a smile that was somehow sad, cheeky, and loving all at once. "The first guy that attacked Sokka came right after I shouted about us going to Gaoling. He had to have heard, and then I felt him get away after Sokka turned to help Katara."

Sokka looked away. The moment of his first kill had been playing over and over again in his mind since they took to the air.

"They have to know that we're headed to Gaoling," Toph explained further. "We can't go there—they'll track us right to my parents."

Katara leaned back into the grass, devastated and looking thoroughly heartbroken. "Where can we go?" she despaired. "It took us all day yesterday to decide on Gaoling... now we're stranded, and Aang is counting on us."

"I'm sorry," Toph apologized softly. "I was frustrated at your argument and—"

"It's okay," Katara interrupted with a knowing smile. "You couldn't have known."

The siblings' gazes shifted to the rolling, grassy field that stretched into the distance. The wind created a sea of the landscape as it pushed through the pasture in waves. If only it was a real sea, Katara thought to herself, but its beauty was still comparable; in the distance, the trees of the monstrous forest they had just made their way from swayed under the rolling clouds against the afternoon blue sky. The sun burned brightly and hotly.

Sokka furrowed his brow thoughtfully. "We don't have to be stranded."

Katara tilted her head at him, skeptical yet hopeful. "What do you mean?"

"This whole time we've been looking for a place to take Aang, we've only been thinking about the places we've been," Sokka explained. "And no matter where we take him, when he wakes up, he's going to have to train extra hard—and this time, it's gonna have to be in all four elements. He won't have the eclipse to help him when the Comet gets here."

Katara narrowed her eyes. "What are you getting at?"

"I'm saying Aang is going to need a firebending teacher. I think... we should go to the Fire Nation."

Katara was already shaking her head. "No—no, absolutely not. We can't take Aang to the Fire Nation in the state he's in. That's nuts! How would we even find a healer?"

"It makes some sense to me," Toph countered. "I could see firebenders having good medicine in even small villages, especially for infections. They burn each other all the time!"

"Exactly," Sokka agreed, immensely grateful for the earthbender's support. "And it's the last place that they would expect to find us! We just put on disguises and _bam_, eazy schmeazy. No problem."

Katara punched the bridge of her nose in frustration. "But what about Aang's tattoos? Or the _giant flying bison_?"

Appa grumbled, and Katara apologized with her eyes.

"It's not like we have to stay in a hotel, Katara," he answered. "There's probably plenty of space to hide. I don't think they have much defense against people who can fly. They took care of that a long time ago."

"I still don't like this idea," Katara snapped. "Why am I the only one that thinks it's crazy to fly directly into enemy territory when Aang is unconscious and all of us just almost died?" she argued. "We know what they can do, and you want to go camp out in their backyard?"

"We'll be safer there—I just know it. It's a gut feeling," Sokka explained desperately, his face twisted into a pressing but apologetic expression. "We can find a small village, get Aang some professional help, and when he wakes up, he'll be in prime country for finding a bending teacher!"

"Well excuse me if I don't want to risk Aang's life—_all _of our lives on your gut feelings!"

Toph frowned. "Katara, when you were trying to convince me to go to Gaoling, you told me to let go of my bias and try to do what's right for Aang and for all of us. I think you should try that now."

"But—but that was different," Katara pleaded, her mannerisms growing more forlorn by the second as she realized her impending defeat. "We knew exactly what we were getting into by going to Gaoling." She looked westward. "Flying into Fire Nation territory—especially without even knowing where we're actually going—it seems like a nightmare to me. Like a bad roll of dice waiting to happen."

"We don't have any other choice," Toph said. "Not one that I can think of, anyway. And who knows? Maybe dressing up in red and pretending to be evil will be fun."

Katara sighed despondently and looked to her feet. "If both of you think this is the right thing to do... I guess I'll trust you."

Sokka's lips twisted into a small smile. "Good. Now let's get out of here. Appa's fixed up, and we have a lot of ground to cover."

- —** — **— -

In the air, the majority of Katara's time was spent doing what she had done while on the ground: trying to nurse Aang back to health. But the infection was stubborn, and though her exhaustingly long healing sessions on the bison's back did well to slow the progression of the corruption, it progressed nonetheless. But the air was soothing for everyone; even Toph had calmed noticeably while on the bison's back. Sokka did end up steering, but only because he was the best at reading what held the closest resemblance to an up-to-date Fire Nation map. As for Toph, between sleeping, scratching the surprisingly itchy wound on her thigh, and practicing metalbending with the arrowheads (and caring little about how disgusting Katara found this activity), her time was well managed.

All in all, for such a frantic beginning, the trip westward was deceptively relaxing. But there was soft, subtle fear that niggled at the hearts of the trio—that perhaps their decision to fly to the Fire Nation was a poor one. Nevertheless, it remained unspoken, and morale was still impressively high.

It was during this time that Katara noticed how quickly Aang's hair grew, and she spent much of her time wondering how on earth she had only seen him shave once. Already she had discovered just how much she enjoyed running her hands through the soft fuzz when she believed nobody would notice.

Being shirtless often during his time awake and constantly since being leaving Ba Sing Se, Aang's body was very familiar to Katara; she knew it well. But it was only since her time outside of the cave that she grew the inexplicable urge to cuddle up next to him before bed, or to run her hands along his tattoos, or to hold his hand. But with her brother's constant proximity, she didn't often have the opportunity to do such strange things without being poked fun at. Toph was the type of person, Katara knew, to bluntly point out the intentional not-so-obvious... which meant that actively avoiding detection was a good way for the earthbender to get suspicious. It was a catch-22.

Consequently, with such a flurry of contradicting emotions, life was confusing. Regret, relief, affection and loathing swirled around the waterbender like the clouds they cut through, and when they stopped to camp each afternoon, sleep eluded her. Spirits were high, but it all felt too fragile, like a single wrong move could end in disaster. Without a true healer, Katara had learned quickly that Aang's infection was unstoppable, and his life hinged on the plan with the Fire Nation working out accordingly—and that was an even bigger gamble.

Their ambush played over and over in her mind. She was frozen upon watching knife slide into her brother, like her feet were molded to the earth, and it reminded her of the feeling of watching Aang be struck with lightning and just having to stop for a moment to take in reality. It was like some sort of tragedy paralysis, as if even her own limbs were struck with disbelief, frozen by the cold harshness of the universe. She often wondered what she would be doing if she and Aang had won in Ba Sing Se. Would she be talking with Kuei at the palace? Would she be waterbending with Aang?

She sat up from her sleeping pad—tired of pondering the same questions, rolling them around in her head, testing their weight—and blinked groggily. They were on the far western coast of the Earth Kingdom, near Senlin village, and tomorrow they would be crossing the sea into the Fire Nation. She stood, subconsciously checking the few trees around her for danger, and made her way up the hill, enjoying the breeze. It was a windy night, and the though the full moon had passed days ago, with the assistance of the stars, it provided enough illumination for Katara to find her way. She sat at the top of the hill, watched the trees sway in the wind, and listened to the rustling song they produced.

Sokka found her a few minutes later and took his sit next to her.

"I couldn't sleep either," he said.

She nodded but didn't respond. The warm breeze in her hair, the darkness over her face, and the stars above her created a sort of ethereal atmosphere, and she didn't want to break its spiritual quietness. Still, she didn't mind Sokka's presence or the quiet conversation she could tell he wanted to start.

"Back at the cave near Ba Sing Se, why did you want to steer Appa?" he asked softly, looking ahead to the dark, rolling hills. "It seemed so unlike you. I would have sworn you'd want to stay in the back with Aang."

Katara considered her words carefully for a moment. She had thought about it before he asked, but not much. "Aang's wound is infected, Sokka," she said sadly. "He's got a fever, and people with fevers wake up with terrible nightmares and visions." She looked to her lap shamefully. "I didn't want to see him like that. Which I guess doesn't make sense, because if he woke up while I was steering, I would have come back to help. But I wasn't thinking logically."

She sighed. "When he would need me most, I didn't want to be there. You must... think I'm a terrible person."

"Not at all. I killed someone a few days ago. If anyone is the terrible person, it's me."

She put a comforting hand on his shoulder. "If that man wasn't dead, I would be."

"It doesn't make things any easier," he breathed.

"No, I guess it doesn't."

- —** — **— -

_**A/N: **__There's a whole lot going on in this chapter, and it's a very important one, including one of the three major scenes I had envisioned when I first started planning this fic. As for the actual writing, I'm not so sure. I feel like it alternates between being some of my better work and plain awkward... let me know what you think. On the bright side, we'll get a lot more of the Gaang from now on, so that's good. Plus, I'm pretty sure I'm done putting almost every single character through a horrible loss of innocence ritual... except for Kuei. I think his entire life will be one of those._

_Thanks for reading!_


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